I know Marshall Deitz, who worked for IBM in 1975, reported a sighting of a station wagon on April 7, 1975. But was there actually another witness, who also worked for IBM, who reported a similar sighting of a station wagon on that date? If there really was a second witness, does any one know if that person is still alive?
If you read some of my earlier posts and summaries about the Lyon Case, you will see that I refer to an unnamed witness who worked for IBM and who described the incident in Manassas involving a 1968 Tan Ford Station Wagon. He was never identified by name in any MCP press releases or in any news paper articles.
The "IBM Man" is not the same person as MDeitz, who also worked for IBM at the time of his sighting of a Ford Station Wagon in Manassas, although it is quite possible that both men saw the same vehicle about the same time.
When I wrote the case summary back about 1999, I had never heard of MDeitz. He began posting in this forum a few years ago and stated that he, too, had seen the Station Wagon AND that he had reported it to Montgomery County Police at the time. He was never mentioned by MCP in their press releases regarding the incident, but there were some reports which mentioned "other people" sighting the Tan Ford Station Wagon, or a car like it on the same day (7 April 1975).
I do not know if the "IBM Man" is still living or if he has been contacted in recent years. MCP detectives stated to me several years ago that he had been questioned several times and that his story did not change. According to press reports at the time, the IBM Man thought that the driver of the Station Wagon looked like the sketch of the Tape Recorder Man which had been released 6 days earlier.
While it is quite likely that both the first IBM Man and MDeitz witnessed the same incident (although with slightly different descriptions of events) one has to consider various possibilities as to what it was that they saw. Some of those possibilities are:
- an actual sighting of the Lyon sisters being moved throught Virginia two weeks after they went missing.
- A man driving his daughters to school and mistaken for someone traveling with the Lyon sisters.
- A hoax intentionally perpetrated by someone who (for whatever reason) wanted people to think that they had seen the Lyon Sisters.
- Some other reasonable explanation