Murders of Katherine and Sheila Lyon

The murders of Katherine and Sheila Lyon were the abduction, sexual abuse and murder of two sisters – aged 10 and 12 respectively – who disappeared from a shopping center in Wheaton, Maryland, on March 25, 1975.

Described as a crime which shattered the innocence of the suburbs of Maryland, the disappearance of Katherine and Sheila Lyon initiated one of the largest police investigations in the history of the Washington metropolitan area, although their fate would remain unknown for thirty-eight years, by which time their disappearance had long become a cold case.

A re-investigation of the sisters' disappearance in 2013 led detectives to charge a convicted child sex offender named Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. with the first-degree murder of the Lyon sisters. Welch was indicted for their murders in July 2015; he pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in September 2017 via a plea bargain in which he admitted to participating in the girls' abduction, but not their sexual assault and murder. He was sentenced to two concurrent terms of 48 years' imprisonment.

The bodies of Katherine and Sheila Lyon have never been found, although authorities believe their bodies were burned and buried upon a remote mountain in Bedford County, Virginia. Furthermore, prosecutors have named other members of Welch's family – including his uncle – as persons of interest in the girls' abduction, abuse and murder, although no other individuals have been charged due to insufficient evidence. Provided by Wikipedia