Local Crime & Public Safety
Investigators return to Virginia land linked to Lyon sisters case
Federal and local agencies involved in a search along Taylors Mountain in Bedford County, Virginia.


Photo from 2015 along Taylors Mountain in Bedford County, Virginia. (Dan Morse)

By Dan Morse
October 29, 2024 at 2:38 p.m. EDT

Investigators are searching land in the Virginia mountains this week that has long been linked to the case of Katherine and Sheila Lyon, two Maryland girls who were abducted and vanished nearly 50 years ago in a high-profile case that reshaped many Washington-area residents’ sense of safety. ... Seven years have passed since authorities last combed this rugged patch of Bedford County along Taylors Mountain Road for clues about the sisters, whose remains have never been found. It isn’t yet clear whether the search is again for evidence that could show they were buried on the land or if investigators are working on a case involving other victims.


Montgomery County police officials during a 2014 news conference. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

The girls — 10 and 12 — disappeared in 1975 after they’d walked to a mall in Montgomery County to have lunch, meet friends and look at Easter decorations. After decades of searching, investigators in 2014 came to believe a man named Lloyd Welch and others had abducted the girls, who were then killed, and burned the remains of at least one of the girls on the Taylors Mountain property then owned by his family, according to court filings.

Investigators conducted forensic digs of the property, sifting through soil where the girls bodies had possibly been burned, but found no bones linked to them, authorities have said. The hope was not only finding key clues in their case but also finding answers for Sheila and Katherine Lyon’s family, for whom painful questions lingered even after Welch in 2017 pleaded guilty under a felony murder doctrine for killings “in the commission of abduction with intent to defile.” He did not admit to directly killing either girl.

In a statement Tuesday from the U.S. Marshals Office in the Western District of Virginia, officials said that based on “new evidence” from a cold case, which they did not specify, the U.S. Marshals Service, along with other agencies including the FBI, is searching the land. The Marshals Office declined to comment further because the matter is an active investigation.

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By Dan Morse
Dan Morse covers courts and crime in Montgomery County. He arrived at the paper in 2005, after reporting stops at the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun and Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of "The Yoga Store Murder."follow on X @morsedan