The Lyon Sisters: A Casefile of Silence, Sound, and a Five-Cent Detail
Dicking Around With Richie: A True Crime Feed
Little Dickies,
There are cases that feel like storms. Loud. Violent. Sudden.
And then there are cases like this one. Quiet suburban streets. A mall on a spring afternoon. Two sisters with a couple of dollars in their pockets and a pizza on their minds.
The disappearance of Sheila and Katherine Lyon did not begin with a scream. It began with an ordinary walk, a five-cent complaint, and a brother leaving a pizza shop without knowing it would become the last normal moment of his childhood.
The Sisters at the Center
Sheila Lyon was twelve. Katherine Lyon was ten.
They lived with their family in Kensington, Maryland, in a neighborhood where doors were often left unlocked and children walked to the mall without fear. Their father, John Lyon, was a well-known radio personality. Their home was active, close-knit, and ordinary in the best possible way.
Sheila was described as responsible and social. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and was known for being dependable. Katherine was the lighter spirit. Cheerful. Playful. Looking forward to her upcoming birthday.
They were only days away from turning thirteen and eleven. They were supposed to grow up.
More than a case file. Two sisters, two birthdays around the corner, and a future that never came.
Forty Cents to Forty-Five
The morning of March 25, 1975, began quietly.
It was spring break. The children slept in. There was no rush, no school bus, no looming responsibilities. Just another relaxed morning in a suburban kitchen.
At some point, Katherine mentioned something that felt important to her in the way only small childhood concerns can feel important.
The Orange Bowl pizza place at Wheaton Plaza had raised the price of a slice.
From forty cents to forty-five.
Five cents. Half a dime. But to a ten-year-old with a few dollars in her pocket, it mattered. It was worth mentioning. Worth complaining about. Worth telling her mother as if she were reporting serious news.
It was one of the last ordinary things she would ever say at home. Not a goodbye. Not a final hug. Just a complaint about pizza prices.
The Walk to Wheaton Plaza
Wheaton Plaza was a normal suburban mall. On March 25, 1975, it became the center of a nightmare.
The girls left their home sometime between late morning and noon. They were headed to Wheaton Plaza, about half a mile away. It was a normal trip. One they had taken before. One their parents did not consider dangerous.
They had a curfew. They were to be home by four in the afternoon.
The mall was a familiar place. It had shops, Easter displays, and the Orange Bowl restaurant where they planned to eat lunch. Nothing about the trip suggested risk. Nothing about the day felt unusual.
The Last Slice of Pizza
The Orange Bowl. Where a slice of pizza cost forty-five cents, and two sisters were last seen alive.
Around two in the afternoon, their fifteen-year-old brother Jay saw them inside the Orange Bowl.
They were eating pizza together. They looked normal. Relaxed. Unbothered. Just two sisters on a spring break afternoon, spending their lunch money and enjoying a day at the mall.
Jay left them there.
It was an ordinary moment. The kind that happens in families every day. Siblings separate, finish their food, head home at different times.
In another version of that day, the girls would have walked through the front door by four o’clock. Maybe still talking about the five-cent price increase. Maybe laughing about something they saw at the mall. But they never came home. That moment at the Orange Bowl became the last time a member of their family would see them alive.
The Timeline Begins to Fracture
Witnesses saw the sisters walking home along their usual route. They were spotted heading toward their neighborhood. One resident waved to them as they passed. They waved back.
That was the last confirmed sighting.
At four o’clock, they were not home. By early evening, concern became fear. By seven, the police were called.
Two girls had disappeared from a suburban neighborhood in broad daylight. And no one could say, with certainty, what happened in between.
The Media Storm
The story spread fast. A suburban disappearance that shattered a community’s sense of safety.
The search was massive. Police canvassed neighborhoods. Volunteers combed parks and wooded areas. Divers searched ponds and streams. The National Guard was even deployed after a tip.
The story dominated local media. Parents across the region started locking their doors. The illusion of safety cracked that week.
The Voice on the Radio
John Lyon carried the search for his daughters for more than four decades. On the air and in silence.
The day after the girls disappeared, their father walked into his radio studio.
John Lyon had built a career on his voice. People across Washington knew it. Trusted it. They woke up to it.
That morning, he put on his headphones, sat at the microphone, and went on the air. But this time, he was not speaking as a broadcaster. He was speaking as a father whose daughters were missing.
Across the city, people turned on their radios expecting the usual. Instead, they heard a man holding himself together word by word as he asked for help finding his children.
He asked for information. He asked for tips. He asked for his daughters to be brought home. It was not dramatic. It was not theatrical. It was a father’s voice traveling through the air, hoping it might reach someone who knew something. Or maybe even reach the girls themselves.
Theories, Suspects, and Tunnel Vision
Decades later, the investigation circled back to a man who had spoken to police in the first week.
In the early years of the investigation, attention centered on a mysterious man seen at the mall. Witnesses described a middle-aged man in a suit carrying a tape recorder, speaking to children as if conducting interviews. He became known as the Tape Recorder Man.
Over time, investigators focused heavily on Raymond Mileski Sr., a violent offender who resembled the composite sketch and walked with a limp similar to witness descriptions. He had a criminal history, lived in the region, and matched the physical profile.
He looked like the suspect investigators feared. For years, the investigation seemed to orbit him. This is where tunnel vision can take hold. When a suspect fits the profile, the case can begin to shape itself around that person.
In 1982, police searched Mileski’s former property. They found nothing. No remains. No belongings. No forensic link.
Meanwhile, an eighteen-year-old named Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. had given a statement in 1975 placing himself at the mall. He described the girls in unusual detail and failed a polygraph. Investigators dismissed him as a troublemaker seeking reward money. His statement sat in the case file for nearly forty years.
The Mountain That Held the Truth
Taylor’s Mountain. Where the search for answers finally found ground beneath it.
In 2013, cold-case detectives reopened the investigation. They asked a different question. They did not start with the sketch. They started with the file. Who was actually there.
That led them back to Lloyd Welch. Through years of interrogation and investigation, detectives traced his movements and the movements of his family. Their search led them to a remote property in Bedford County, Virginia, on Taylor’s Mountain.
Family members described Welch arriving with duffel bags, a strange smell, and a fire that burned for days. Investigators conducted forensic excavations in 2014 and 2015.
They found a human tooth, a beaded necklace, and charred wire believed to be from Sheila’s glasses. The remains were never fully recovered, but the evidence supported Welch’s confession.
In 2017, he pleaded guilty to the murders. After more than four decades, the case finally had a legal resolution.
The Brother Who Walked Away
Inside the Lyon family, the loss was never just about the investigation.
Fifteen-year-old Jay Lyon had seen his sisters at the pizza shop that afternoon. They looked normal. Happy. Safe. He left.
For the rest of his life, that ordinary moment became something else. A fixed memory that never changed. The last image of his sisters before they vanished.
Siblings in cases like this often carry a quiet burden. They are the ones who grow up in houses shaped by absence. The ones who remember the last ordinary moment. Jay did not just lose his sisters. He lost the life they were supposed to share.
The Ending That Was Never Enough
Taylor’s Mountain is quiet. Remote. The kind of place where the wind moves through the trees and nothing else disturbs the silence.
But beneath that silence is the end of the Lyon sisters’ story. A burn site. A handful of fragments. And the confirmation of what happened after two girls walked home from the mall and never made it.
The conviction brought legal closure. But the physical closure never came. No full remains. No proper burial. No final goodbye. Just the knowledge of where the story likely ended.
Two sisters worried about a five-cent pizza increase. A brother who walked away from an ordinary lunch. A father speaking into a microphone, hoping his voice might reach farther than fear. That is how this story begins. And how, for the Lyon family, it never truly ended.
What’s Next
The story of Sheila and Katherine Lyon is one of silence, endurance, and a father’s voice echoing across four decades of unanswered questions. It is a case that reminds us how quickly ordinary afternoons can become permanent shadows.
But the work of remembering does not stop here.
Our next case takes us into a crime that shocked a quiet Delaware community and revealed a level of brutality that still unsettles investigators decades later.
His name was Brian David Steckel. But the public would come to know him by another name.
The Driftwood Killer.
The Lyon sisters’ case is about innocence stolen. The Steckel case is about the anatomy of depravity. In our next deep dive, we will walk through that darkness piece by piece. Because every victim deserves their story told with truth, clarity, and a voice that refuses to look away.
Thanks for dicking around with Richie. Keep being a voice for the voiceless.
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