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

[maconrich]

Thank you for the additional information, Richard!! I had obviously missed quite a bit - namely that they didn't change the sketch after the man came forward, and that he may have been attempting to lead the police away from Prince Georges County. I do agree that the fact this man (TRM) wasn't seen following the disappearance of the Lyon sisters sounds like much more than coincidence - especially since he was seen speaking to them I understand the need to keep the discussion of the TRM and Coffey separate, but the fact he was know to have used ploys to get children close to him makes it harder to do - as in this sounds like something right up his alley... Again, many thanks!

 

[Thrasher]

Another reason to think of TRM and Coffey together are that they are the two most substantial leads in the case. MCP have not found anyone whose profile and movements fit the disappearance of the girls as Coffey does; add that to the fact that Coffey is known to have used similar lures in shopping centers before, and the connection remains the best working hypothesis.

It is hard to think of a scenarios where the girls were forcibly abducted in a public setting; there almost certainly had to be some lure and deception involved. As I have argued before, I don't think anyone else who has been mentioned as a possible suspect in the past 33 years really fits (alleged jailhouse confessions are not evidence); I don't think the alleged sighting in Manassas is reliable, and neither are the accounts of seeing the girls walking home on Faulkner Place or Drumm Road. They almost certainly left the plaza somewhat willingly as a result of some action by the TRM.

 

[Redskins]

I have been reading this with great interest and sadness. I was 6 when this happened and lived in Silver Spring. My mother wouldn’t even take us to Wheaton Plaza for years afterwards. It really shook the region badly.
In high school (in the early 80's) I met a friend who lived in the same neighborhood as the Lyon family only a block away at the time of the abduction. Many times in high school we went to the Wheaton Plaza and then took a short cut to his home afterward and the first time we did it he told me it was the same path the girls took a decade earlier... I was 15 or so but it still gave me the shivers.

Does anyone remember the case of Junior Burdynski? He was a kid who disappeared in 1993 in Bentwood, MD. I don’t think they ever found him but they connected the disappearance to a ring of pedophiles/child pornographers several years ago. I don’t think they ever actually charged anyone with kidnapping or killing him but if I remember correctly I think the assumption was that these guys took him and sent him to Costa Rica or somewhere to be used in kiddie .
One of the ring of suspected kiddie guys was named James Kowalski. My high school buddy told me that Kowalski lived right down the street from the Lyon Family in 1975. Kowalski was in a punk band called White Boy and my friend who worked at a record store in 1993, said that Kowalski came in a few days after the disappearance was in the news and was trying to sell his record collection, which was very valuable, b/c he was moving to Costa Rica – that’s where my buddy recognized him, made the connection to the Lyon Sisters and he called the FBI who interviewed him about the information.
Nothing ever came of it – I guess Kowalski was never charged in the Budynski disappearance but I wonder if the link to the Lyon sisters was ever looked into Thoroughly?
Anyone ever hear of this?

 

[danmanhatter]

James Kowalski (aka Mr Ott) was a MIDDLE-AGED punk rocker who often wore a SUIT while singing into the MICROPHONE.

When he wasn't working his day job for a printing company in Greenbelt, he was doing night gigs with his band White Boy. His teenage son, Glenn Kowalski (aka Jake Whipp), was also one of the members of the band.

In 1993 (18 years later) the law finally caught up with him. He was charged with child . He was convicted and spent many years in prison. He was last known to be in VA.

Here's the crazy part...
He once lived on Jennings Road - just a block away from the Lyon sisters. Before that he had lived in the immediate area dating back to the mid-60's.

If that's not enough...
His picture on the album cover (1977) has similarities to the TRM sketch!

The TRM sketch:
http://www.forthelost.org/lyon.html

The Album cover:
http://asfm.blogspot.com/2008/05/white-boy-sagitarius-bumpersticker.html

More Albums:
http://www.30underdc.com/discogs/doodleysquat1.shtml

 

[ShurlT]

Thanks for posting the album site, Danmanatter.
Does Kowalski have blue eyes? Both Coffey and TRM have blue eyes. Anybody know what year Kowalski born?

 

[Thrasher]

Good to see some comment here again - maybe nothing much new, but I don't want to see it forgotten. I talked to the Lyons at a party a few days ago, and was thinking I should check on this thread again. They remain great inspirations to me.

The problem with the TRM sketch is that it looks like an awful lot of people.

I don't know anything specific about Kowalski, but I know that the MCPS interviewed everyone in the Lyons' neighborhood at the time; those who had some criminal record were interviewed repeatedly, alibis were verified and background checks were done. If this individual had any child-related record at the time, he would have been a major focus of interest. I would be surprised if MCPS does not know where he was on March 25, 1975.

In addition, since 1975, every child offender MCPS becomes aware of that was in the area at that time has been checked. This is how Coffey was found. Apart from all the other reasons to suspect Coffey, I think an itinerant like him fits the profile more than someone who was a neighbor.

If Richard is out there somewhere, he may know about Kowalski as a person of interest.

 

[Motherof5]

Hello, I'm new here and this is my first post. I"ve been reading this thread for 2 years but wasn't sure that I could be of any help. Here goes... I agree that TRM is probably our guy, but am having trouble with him being Coffey. I think this was brought up before but I can't find it now. If I'm understanding this,Coffey began work at Vitro after the girls were taken. It doesn't make sense to me that he would take them and then hang around and work in the area given his past with children. When Kathy was reported to be alive, he took off using the same excuse he'd used before and that makes sense. I just don't see him kidnapping the girls and then sticking around knowing that LE would want to talk to him due to his record.Anyway, just wanted to put that out there.

 

[Motherof5]

Subject: ABDUCTION SCAM

Make sure you read the entire thing. Towards the end is really important!!!!!

Recently on Inside Edition there was an article about several new scams to abduct women. In one, a man comes up to a woman in a Mall or Shopping Center and asks if she likes pizza. When she says she does, he offers her $1,000 to shoot a commercial for Pizza, but they need to go outside where the lighting is better. When the woman goes out of the mall she is abducted and assaulted.

Another ploy is a very nicely dressed man asks a woman if she would be in a Public Service announcement to discourage drug use. The man explains that they don't want professional actors or celebrities; they want the average mother to do this. Once she leaves the mall she is a victim.

The third ploy, the most successful, a frantic man comes running in to the mall and asks a woman to please help him, his baby is not breathing. She runs out of the mall following him and also becomes a victim.

These have been happening in well-lit parking areas, in daylight as well as night time, all over the country. The abductor usually uses a van to abduct the woman. Inside Edition set up a test in a Mall and 10 out of 15 women went out of the mall on the Pizza and the PSA scam. And all of them went out of the mall on the baby scam. Please pass this along to your friends and family as now that it has been shown on nationwide TV there are bound to be copycats of this. The third one, I think, is the scariest.

You might resist pizza or becoming a commercial celebrity but who would be able to resist a frantic father asking for help for his child? I'm sure that one would get me.

A woman was shopping at the Tuttle Mall in Columbus. She came out to her car and saw she had a flat. She got her jack and spare out of the trunk. A man in a business suit came up and started to help her. When the tire had been replaced, he asked for a ride to his car on the opposite side of the mall. Feeling uncomfortable about doing this, she stalled for a while, but he kept pressing her. She finally asked why he was on this side of the mall if his car was on the other. He claimed he had been talking to friends. Still uncomfortable, she told him that she had just remembered something she had forgotten to pick up at the mall and she left him and went back inside the mall. She reported the incident to the mall security and they went out to her car. The man was nowhere in sight. Opening her trunk, she discovered a briefcase the man had set inside her trunk while helping her with the tire. Inside were rope and a butcher knife. And, when she took the tire to be fixed, the mechanic informed her that there was nothing wrong with her tire, that it was at because the air had been let out of it.

I think that the PSA announcement could have easily worked on a child.

 

[Thrasher]

It is less hard to understand Coffey if you recognize that in 1975, local law enforcement knew nothing about him and there were no databases for child offenders or missing children. That type of crime was almost unheard of in this county in 1975. It wasn't until 12 years later that MCPS learned of him, and that he was at Vitro at that time, and this was learned almost by accident. When he started at Vitro, he probably was already through doing whatever he did with the girls, and he needed a job. I am sure he would have left as soon as there was any heat, as he in fact did when news broke that Kathy Beatty might survive.

In regard to your other post, there are many versions of this scam that could have worked on these girls. The strange and unfortunate thing is that no one saw anything or positively identified a perpetrator, despite the huge crowds and many children who knew the girls and saw them there, not to mention the difficulty of abducting two people at once.

 

[Motherof5]

Thank you for your reply. I just meant that you would think that given his past,he would be afraid to stick around. Then again,if he is TRM, he wasn't afraid of too much given the fact that the girls were taken in broad day light . I wish we had a photo of him from the 1970's.

 

[MomofBoys]

I ended up on WS because of the Caylee Anthony case, but have since branched out.

I've been reading with great interest as I had heard of this case, but never really researched it.

My biggest question (and please forgive me if I missed the one page that discussed it) is, why the ruse of the answering machine message? It seems so random and odd. I can see him approaching girls with a puppy or any number of kid-friendly ruses, but why to record a message?

Did he plan on using the voices in some way? An audio recording to later "prove" the girls were alive in the event of a ransom demand or other blackmail scenario? I read the Inside Edition article about the PSA ruse, but he didn't take these girls away from the mall for the recording, at least at first--I just don't get the motive there. Maybe it WAS just because he liked the sound of little girls' voices. Bizarre.

Such a sad case.

 

[Thrasher]

As far as I know, the answering machine recording is just one theory about what the TRM may have presented. Some people reported this ruse at other times or places.

John Lyon was a career radio announcer, so I doubt the girls would have been too dumbstruck by seeing recording equipment. And they were a little too old and sophisticated, probably, to go for anything as simple as a puppy. But certainly some elaborate story could have been concocted to distract and intrigue them. Coffey certainly had pulled things off before. Given what we know about the girls and the family, it remains very hard to understand why they would willingly leave the middle of the plaza and go to a more secluded place with a stranger, if that is in fact what happened.

 

[Motherof5]

I think that almost everyone would agree that TRM is most likely the person who took the girls.Yet, I keep going back to the fact that they were taken in the middle of the day with people around. This has me always going back to one question. Was it really someone they knew? I don't mean kind of, I mean,someone they knew really well. That would explain why they would have left without drawing attention to themselves.Again, just thinking out loud.

 

[Thrasher]

The search was incredibly exhaustive, and everyone who was determined to be acquainted with the girls, or had any history with the family was accounted for, and no one was identified who could have had any connection disappeared shortly afterward (of course, Fred Coffey disappeared the day after Kathy Beatty apparently came out of a coma).

However, because of the circumstances - Wheaton Plaza on a beautiful day during Easter vacation - you do have to consider the possibility that they got into a vehicle voluntarily, because a commotion would almost certainly have been noticed by someone. Many people apparently remembered seeing them there that day, but no one knows where they went after talking to the TRM.

An attempt was made to track them with dogs - but, as with so many efforts in this case, the luck was very bad - although it was very calm the day they disappeared, there were several very windy days afterward, and no scent could be found.

 

[Motherof5]

Thrasher.......

Brother Jay saw them eating pizza but did not see them talking to TRM,is that correct? Also, do we know if the child that said he saw them walking home could have mixed his days up? It just seems more likely to me that if TRM is the one that took them,he would have taken them from the mall given the layout of the route to their house. I feel like he would have talked to them,liked them and taken them from the parking lot when they were finished eating and starting the walk home.

 

[Thrasher]

Yes, the story is that Jay saw them eating pizza, but did not see the TRM.

I said a while back in this thread that I did not believe the story about the boy who saw them walking home. I think he was mistaken either in the day or in whom he saw. He did not mention it until several days after; it meant nothing at the time. But because of the layout (I know the area very well; I lived a mile away at the time and I live in the Lyons' neighborhood now) I cannot imagine an abductor taking the two of them from those streets (Drumm/McComas/Faulkner) - they would have been in plain sight on a beautiful day, and a vehicle cannot get through Drumm Road between McComas and Plyers Mill - it was and still is a pedestrian passageway. And someone who had met them at the Plaza would have had great difficulty timing his drive (which required a big loop around by way of University Boulevard) in order to accost them on their walk home. Their route home was also not a place where someone would just be passing by - basically only residents drove through there, and getting away quickly and undetected would require winning the girls trust and knowing how to drive out quickly, which would be much less likely there than at the crowded Plaza.

I know, just from talking to the family, that there is a great deal to this case that has not been made public (and not much of it has been shared with me). My impression is that the family does not believe the walking-home abduction theory. Given the whole TRM story, I think they were convinced by some ruse to get in a car at Wheaton Plaza.

John Lyon turned 69 on Saturday - we still hope for a resolution in his lifetime.

 

[Motherof5]

Yes, if I had to pick one case that I would love to see solved more than any other it would be this one. Do you know what drives me crazy? Several people claimed to have seen or to have been approached by TRM and yet we still don't know who he was. I wish that sketch had been released everywhere. It seems likely that he was either new to town or not living in the area. Many prayers to the Lyons.

 

[Richard]

...Does anyone remember the case of Junior Burdynski? He was a kid who disappeared in 1993 in Bentwood, MD. I don’t think they ever found him but they connected the disappearance to a ring of pedophiles/child pornographers several years ago. ... One of the ring of suspected kiddie guys was named James Kowalski. My high school buddy told me that Kowalski lived right down the street from the Lyon Family in 1975. ... my buddy recognized him, made the connection to the Lyon Sisters and he called the FBI who interviewed him about the information.
Nothing ever came of it – I guess Kowalski was never charged in the Budynski disappearance but I wonder if the link to the Lyon sisters was ever looked into Thoroughly?
Anyone ever hear of this?

You are correct in stating that a child poronography ring was investigated regarding the disappearance of George "Junior" Burdynski from his Brentwood, MD (Prince Georges County) home some years ago. That case is profiled in Websleuths' Cold Case Files.

Junior is still missing and the case has never been solved or closed. James A. Kowalski, Jr. and two other men were arrested and charged with child abuse in a similar case involving boys from Junior's neighborhood, but no one was ever charged in the abduction or disappearance of Junior Burdynski.

While it is possible that James A. Kowalski may have lived in the Kensington/Wheaton area at some time, I could not confirm that he lived on Jennings Road in Kensington. I looked in archived phone books dated 1972 through October 1975 and could not find his name listed at a Jennings Road address.

 

[ShurlT]

Thrasher, from the information Richard put on this forum back a while ago our understanding on websleuths was that after Kathy Beatty was found she was in a coma and died about 2 weeks later without gaining consciousness.

That alone would and could have made the perpetrater leave the area because he would have known...IF...she woke up she could identify her attacker...BUT...if we (websleuths) didn't get all the information available about this case and she did wake up before she died...it might be very important for the Beatty case if she had been able to talk about the attack, 2ndly...if Coffey was not the one who attacked her...why did he leave the area either once he knew she was still alive or once he found she had regained consciousness.

From the horses mouth I've been told they don't think Coffey was the one in the Beatty case nor do they think he is responsible for the Lyon sisters. However, my personal opinion is

 

[ShurlT]

The above post is incomplete because the program told me i was not authorized to edit my post. It's difficult to write a bunch of stuff here and then not be able to post it or loose all or half of it and have to go back and redo.