BEDFORD COUNTY, Va. — Fifty years after two Montgomery County, girls went missing from a Wheaton mall, their convicted murderer will be moved to a Virginia prison to begin serving two concurrent 48-year sentences for their killings.
Lloyd Lee Welch had been prosecuted in Virginia as authorities said they believe the remains of remains of 10-year-old Katherine Lyon and her older sister 12-year-old Sheila Lyon are in the Lynchburg area, 400 miles away from where the two were last seen alive by loved ones.
"Welch is nearing the completion of his Delaware prison sentence," a Delaware corrections' official said on Wednesday. "I can not confirm the exact release date and transfer to Virginia, in part for security reasons, I can confirm that his Delaware sentence will be completed in late December."
Welch confessed that he burned at least one of the Lyon sisters on Taylor's Mountain in Bedford County, Virginia. Neighbors had reported smelling a cremation on the mountain for a few days around the time of the Lyon sisters' disappearance in 1975.
Eighteen at the time of the murders, Welch is now 68 years old. In the years since the sisters' murders. It took nearly 40 years for authorities to connect Welch with this case. He had become a convicted sex offender in the time since, and has been in prison in Delaware since 1997. Montgomery County authorities indicted Welch for abducting and killing the girls after a reinvestigation was launched in 2013, with Welch confessing to the crime a year later.
The Lyon sisters were last seen leaving the Wheaton Plaza Mall ─ now Westfield Wheaton ─ on March 25, 1975. They were both given $2 by their parents and promised their mother a 4 p.m. curfew.
The sisters' parents John and Mary Lyon were both at Welch's conviction in 2017, when Welch received two 48-year sentences from a Virginia judge. Welch also accepted a 12-year sentence for an unrelated child sexual assault case in Prince William County from the 1990s.
Katherine and Sheila's abduction had a dramatic impact on D.C. area parents, who reported becoming more fearful and cautious about their small children.
"I use to keep my front door open. Kids would run in and out, in and out. I didn't' keep it open after that," said Shirley Yania in 2017. Her daughter Sherry was friends with the Lyon sisters.
