On March 25, 1975, 12-year-old Sheila Lyon and her little sister, 10-year old Katherine, walked half a mile from their home to a shopping mall in Wheaton, Maryland…and were never seen again. When news of their disappearance broke, a community was rocked to its core. Residents wondered if someone within their community was responsible, and parents who once felt safe letting their children walk alone now never let them out of their sight. Local law enforcement exhausted all resources in the extensive search for the missing girls, but the investigation into Sheila and Katherine’s disappearance was plagued by false leads and questionable suspects. Despite all of law enforcement’s efforts, the case eventually went cold. Almost four decades later, a new team of determined cold-case investigators uncovered a promising lead, and from there, the twisted story of a witness turned prime suspect begins to unravel. With reporting from bestselling author Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down, The Last Stone) and insight from the cold-case squad who worked relentlessly to solve the mystery, Investigation Discovery follows the reinvestigation into this decades-old disappearance with WHO KILLED THE LYON SISTERS?, premiering Saturday, November 28 at 9/8c, only on ID.
“The tragic disappearance of these two young women is every parent’s worst nightmare, and completely shifted the dynamics of parenting back in 1975,” said Henry Schleiff, Group President of Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, American Heroes Channel and Destination America. “This special follows the important work of the dedicated cold case investigators, because without them, we would never have discovered the truth about what really happened to these children.”
The disappearance of the Lyon sisters was a well-known case in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, in part from the reporting of Mark Bowden who followed the case from the beginning. Its status as a cold case bothered detectives over the years, especially Chris Homrock. In 2013, with the 40th anniversary of the disappearance looming, Homrock decided to take one last look at the files when he came across a potential lead – a statement from a man named Lloyd Welch who claimed to have witnessed the girls’ abduction. This set Homrock and his fellow detectives Dave Davis, Katie Leggett and Mark Janney, on a grueling journey investigating Welch. Over the course of four years, detectives collect hours of audio and video recordings from their questioning of Welch and Welch’s extended family in hopes of getting a break in the case. They work to decipher tiny bits of truth from a forest of deception, uncovering a convoluted family dynamic shrouded in secrets, deception, and alleged crimes. Their search for the Lyon sisters spans across states, leading detectives to a remote mountainside in Virginia where members of Welch’s family have lived for years. Never-before-seen footage from 10 different interrogation sessions with Welch, interviews with Welch family members who became subjects of the investigation, and a recorded confession unfold over the course of two hours, finally bringing this 40-year-old mystery to a close.
WHO KILLED THE LYON SISTERS? is produced for ID by Inkblot Narratives and Wild Eyes Productions. For Inkblot Narratives, Aaron Bowden and Erik Becker are Executive Producers. For Wild Eyes Productions, David Keane and Conor Morris are Executive Producers. For Investigation Discovery, Diana Sperrazza is Executive Producer, Sara Kozak is Senior Vice President of Production, Kevin Bennett is General Manager, and Henry Schleiff is Group President of Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, American Heroes Channel and Destination America.
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