Mystery: Disappearance of girls in 1975

The atmosphere was filled with jubilation on March 25th, 1975, as families across the town planned for Easter festivities. John and Mary Lyon, a couple blessed with four lovely children, decided to take their family out for a delectable lunch at the Orange Bowl, a renowned pizza restaurant in Maryland. With the children on spring break, two of the Lyon offspring, namely Catherine, a 10-year-old, and Sheila, aged 12, yearned to visit the Easter exhibits before lunch. Despite Mary's awareness that the event would be teeming with people, she permitted the girls to go, embracing and kissing them before instructing them to be back home before 4 pm. Little did she know that this would be the final time she would ever see her two beloved daughters. This is the narrative of the Lyon girls, who left to see the Easter exhibits but never returned, and the immense investigation that ensued, uncovering a heartbreaking truth - one of the most extensive police investigations in Washington, a story of agony, and an unsolved disappearance that transformed into a murder case. It was a seemingly ordinary day until Catherine and Sheila failed to arrive home by 4 pm.

Initially, Mary was not overly concerned when Catherine and Sheila failed to arrive home within a few minutes of the instructed time. It was not the first time that the girls had been slightly late. As the evening progressed and the girls did not return home, Mary's initial annoyance was replaced with a growing sense of alarm. By 7 pm, Mary was convinced that something was wrong, and she contacted the police. The search for the missing girls began immediately and would eventually become one of the largest disappearance cases in the history of the United States. To assist with the investigation, the police released a timeline of the girls' movements on the day they disappeared. According to the timeline, Catherine and Sheila left home between 11 am and 12 noon. A child in the neighborhood reported seeing the girls talking to an unknown man outside the Orange Bowl restaurant at around 1 pm. At 2 pm, the girls' brother, Jay Lyon, reported seeing his sisters at the Orange Bowl sharing a box of pizza. 30 minutes later, a friend of the girls told the police that she had seen them walking down a street that led directly to their house. Despite being so close to their home, the girls never arrived. Sergeant Rodney Ingalls of the Montgomery County Police Department was assigned to the case, and he said in 1975 that the last known sighting of the girls was on that street. At this stage of the investigation, the police had no suspects, evidence, or motive. Sergeant Ingalls had spoken to the girls' parents, friends, neighbors, classmates, family friends, private detectives, psychics, and even strangers, yet nobody had any useful information. It was as though Catherine and Sheila had vanished into thin air. The question on everyone's mind was, what happened to these two innocent girls? Where could they be? Were they crying out for help somewhere? Had they been taken to another town for nefarious reasons, or had something even more sinister befallen them?

The quaint little town had always been peaceful, but something had changed drastically. The sudden disappearance of Catherine and Sheila had caused a stir that was difficult to ignore. The investigator assigned to the case had explored every possible theory that could explain the mysterious disappearance of the two young girls. The initial theory of kidnapping had been ruled out as no ransom had been demanded by the abductor. Nonetheless, there were some amateur criminals who had tried to extort money from the family by asking them to deposit money at a bus station in Annapolis, but no one ever came to collect the money. The investigator had also ruled out the possibility of the girls being kidnapped for prostitution purposes, as they were too young for that kind of heinous crime.

There were also those who believed that Catherine and Sheila had run away from home, but this theory was deemed impossible as there was no plausible reason for them to do so. Mary, the girls' mother, confirmed that they had never shown any signs of wanting to leave, and they had always been happy in their family's loving embrace. The Lyon family was left with the chilling possibility that their daughters might have been killed, and their bodies disposed of in a manner that was difficult to detect. This was a painful and realistic scenario, but the investigator refused to accept it, stating that even if their bodies had been buried, animals might have dug them out. But this just raised more questions. What if the bodies had been burned, or buried deep beneath the earth's surface?

After five years of investigation, the investigator resigned, and the case was passed to another detective in the Montgomery County Police Department. This became a cycle that continued for years as various detectives came and went, but the case remained unsolved. It eventually became a constant source of frustration for the police department. Meanwhile, the Lyon family learned to live normal lives, but they never stopped hoping that their daughters would one day come back home. They imagined a future where their little girls had grown up, and they would walk through the door holding hands and smiling. They never lost hope that Catherine and Sheila were alive somewhere, trying their best to make their way back home.

The second story of this case begins in the same year, 1975, when a young 18-year-old man named Lloyd Lee Welch approached the police with some information. Welch, who had long hair and a mustache, claimed to have witnessed the abduction of Catherine and Sheila, the missing Lyon sisters. However, the police didn't believe him and dismissed his account as a lie. The officers were suspicious of his overly detailed account and believed that he was making it up to collect a reward. Despite Welch's claims that the kidnapper walked with a limp, which matched the prime suspect at the time, the case remained unsolved for over 38 years, and people stopped discussing the disappearance or potential murder.

After all those years, Detective Chris Humrock decided to take another look at the case. He went through the archives and discovered Welch's six-page statement submitted to the police years ago. Detective Chris believed this could be the beginning of finding the answers they needed, so he and another detective, Dave Davis, traveled all the way to Dover, Delaware, to meet Welch. However, when they met Welch, he immediately said, "I know why you're here. You were here about those two missing kids." It turned out that Welch had been waiting his whole life for this moment. At this time, Welch was in prison serving a 33-year sentence for molesting a young girl, making the case even more complicated. Initially, Welch denied any involvement with the two sisters, saying, "I didn't kill anybody. I didn't rape anybody. I didn't do nothing to those girls. I mean, I really don't have much to tell."

After Welch's long conversation with the detectives, he eventually mentioned a name that had been associated with the Lion sisters' case for a very long time: Rey Miliski. Moleski, who died in prison in 2004 while serving sentences for murdering his wife and son, had turned himself into the police and was connected to the Lion sisters' disappearance. While in prison, Moleski bragged that he knew who kidnapped and killed Catherine and Sheila. In 2001, a tipster informed the police that Moleski was responsible for the crime. However, despite checking out many elements of the story, none led to the discovery of Catherine and Sheila's bodies or the truth about their killer. When Moleski was contacted in 2001 in prison, he admitted to knowing who had kidnapped and killed the girls, but he said he wouldn't say anything more unless he was shortlisted for a prison transfer. With Miliski's death in 2004, the mystery of the case remained unsolved, and there were no prime suspects.

One of the key pieces of evidence was a sketch provided by a witness in 1975, who had given a detailed description of a man with long hair staring strangely at the girls. The sketch bore a striking resemblance to Welch's mugshot. After several conversations with Welch, he finally admitted to being involved in abducting the Lion sisters in 1975. Welch believed that Catherine and Sheila had been kidnapped for sexual reasons, and investigators suspect that he also burned the body of one of the sisters. Welch maintained that he did not sexually assault Catherine or Sheila, nor was he directly involved in their murder. However, his confession to their abduction directly linked him to their death. As a result, the court sentenced Welch to another 48 years in prison, with the possibility of becoming eligible for parole at age 80. However, his chances of parole are minimal, according to attorney Wes Nance.

Police have announced that they have identified the individual who abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered two young sisters 40 years ago, after their faces were last seen. Although it appeared to be a perfect ending, the family remains unaware of who the perpetrator committed the crimes with, and they still haven't located the children's bodies for closure. Even after 42 years, the family has been unable to give their daughters the burial they deserved. At the conclusion of the sentencing, John Lyon, the father of Catherine and Sheila, expressed his gratitude by simply stating, "We just want to say thank you. It's been a long, long time, and we're tired, and we just want to go home." Russ Ramel, a former assistant chief of the Montgomery County Police Department, summed up the case by stating, "From the beginning, I met with many, many of the officers involved in this case and explained that this wasn't going to have a happy ending. This is definitely not a happy ending story, but we are pleased that someone is finally being held accountable for the untimely deaths of the Lion sisters. We hope that Mary Lyon finds closure after this and that Catherine Lyon and Sheila Lyon rest in peace."