Usher737 said:
Pesonally I feel Coffey is a much more viable suspect than Mileski. Raymond committed a personal killing. I do not believe the Lyon sisters were kidnapped by someone that they knew. I think the crime was committed by someone relatively new to the area and did not stick around long after the crime. I am sure if it was not Coffey it was someone like him. A serial predator who hunts for victims and can carefully dispose of them.
I also feel the tape recorder man was involved. Strange how he never appeared at the mall again or in the surrounding area.
I agree with you completely. There have been quite a few other "individuals of interest" investigated by police over the years, but of all of them Coffey seems the most likely.
Mileski did kill his son and wife in his own home, but no clear reason for doing so ever emerged from the investigation or trial. He maintained over the years that he "knew" who the person was that kidnapped Sheila and Kate. As recently as 2001, he offered to trade that information for better prison accomodations. He was clearly trying to benefit from the case. He was also still trying to appeal his murder conviction as late as December 2004. He died in prison this past May. Mileski may have actually known something, or he may have just been making things up in his own mind and trying to profit from it - much like the many crank callers who asked for ransom during the early stages of the investigation. To believe the Mileski scenario(s) one would have to accept that a very secretive serial killer in some way took Mileski into his confidence - or that Mileski, through some chance encounter, happened upon evidence. That might not be too far off the mark, if for instance, Mileski had rented a room or place to the killer while he was in town, and then later
ran across some evidence which would lead him to believe that the man had committed the abduction and murder of the girls.
Coffey, however, is clearly a serial abuser and killer of children. It is not certain just when he arrived in the Montgomery county, Maryland area. He had been discharged from the Navy on 17 September 1974, following convictions of sexual abuse of children in Virginia Beach, VA. It is known that he was in the Wheaton/Kensington/Silver Spring area on 1 April 1975 -because he interviewed at Vitro Laboratories (a defense contractor firm) on that day. But how much before 1 April he arrived is not known.
Coffey began working for Vitro on 24 April, but left abruptly when Kathy Lynn Beatty was found on 25 July 1975, still barely alive, after being abducted, raped and beatten. Kathy had received fatal injuries and succombed to them on 5 August, never regaining conciousness. Coffey did not stick around to see how things were going to turn out with Kathy. He lied to his employer, saying that his wife and daughter had been in a bad traffic accident, and quit as of 31 July.
There are a lot of coincidences which tie Coffey to the disappearance of Sheila and Kate, and to the abduction and murder of Kathy. But the solid evidence was not there at the time, and by 1987 when Montgomery County Police first heard of Coffey, he was already being tried in North Carolina for the murder of 10-year-old Amanda Ray.
Aside from the sketch and description of "Tape Recorder Man", no physical evidence was found in the case of Kate and Sheila Lyon. It is another very strong coincidence that Tape Recorder Man disappeared at the same time the girls did - when eyewitness testimony placed him at Wheaton Plaza the previous day, and at two other malls the previous Saturday.
In the case of Kathy Beatty's murder, physical evidence might still exist. I know that a ring of keys was found near her. I do not know what other evidence, if any, was found with her. If there is any way that DNA might have survived for 30 years, perhaps her murder can still be solved.
IF Coffey could be conclusively linked to Kathy's murder, perhaps the threat of a death penalty could convince him to talk about his other activites and crimes.
