The headline of this story brags that “a determined squad of detectives finally solved a notorious crime after 40 years”. If you believe that Lloyd Lee Welch isn’t an idiot who loved to brag and hold the attention of the police by making up stories about his family’s involvement in the abduction and murder of the Lyon sisters, Sheila and Katherine, in March 1975 in Maryland, then yes, those heroes, those police officers, should all get medals.
Mr. Welch is a perfect suspect: he already has a conviction for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl. He gave a crazy statement to the police a few days after the kidnapping that was so incoherent and inconsistent that they gave him a lie detector test (which means nothing anyway) which he failed.
It’s not hard to sell all that to the police as a terrific incentive to focus on this suspect.
What you really have is a poorly educated possibly senile and foolish older man being manipulated, bullied, and tricked by a few cynical police officers into making so many wildly inaccurate but incriminating statements that they were able to indict him for the kidnappings and then persuade him to take a plea by threatening him with the death penalty.
In none of the accounts, did I notice the mention of a lawyer representing Mr. Welch. Where is the lawyer? Did they allow him to represent himself? Did a judge, seriously, accept all this?
A good lawyer could probably have cut this case to shreds, which is why– it is safe to presume– the police did everything they could to get a guilty plea.
Ah but the “blood” that showed up in the basement under the light!
The samples they removed were identified as potentially being blood, prosecutors would later write in court papers. The Spec
Is this some kind of joke? This passes for forensic science in the U.S. in 2014? Potentially blood. This is presented to the public and the Lyon family as evidence? What exactly is the scientific description of “potential blood”?
Once investigators began to focus on Welch, more evidence began to emerge
Inevitably. Because they didn’t begin to focus on Welch because they had evidence. They had a suspect: that’s the hallmark of bad policing. Suspect first, twist arms, then evidence.
Mr. Welch told the police that he saw other relatives actually commit the crime. Nobody else has been charged or arrested. If they believe that he has implicated himself, why was no one else arrested?
Detectives investigated the uncle who Welch had claimed was in the basement by spending months listening to phone taps, talking to people who knew him and probing his past before prosecutors determined there was not evidence to seek an indictment.
There is, essentially, the same evidence as there is against Welch: none.
One article on the affair stated that the police had found bones on the property where it was alleged the bodies were burned. That tidbit disappears from other, later accounts. Perhaps what they actually probably had were “potential bones”. Obviously, that too proved to be less than useful and I would have loved to have seen a good defense lawyer take that on in court.
Please note: there was no trial. There was no competent defense lawyer carefully developing arguments against the evidence. There was no evidence. There was a man threatened with the death penalty if he did not confess. He “confessed” though he didn’t really confess (read the details: he implicated others but did not claim that he himself was directly involved). His girlfriend was threatened with charges too, which, if you read about these cases a lot, you will immediately recognize as an attempt to recruit her as a witness against her boyfriend. (Kenneth Starr famously used this strategy against Julie Hiatt Steele in relation to Kathleen Willey’s claims of sexual assault in his investigation of Bill Clinton. Linda Tripp collaborated Steele’s claim that Willey was actually actively seeking a relationship with Bill Clinton, and bragging about it. When Steele refused to change her story, Starr indicted her; the case was tossed out in the end, but not before wrecking havoc on Steele’s life.)
The only connection to the crime is a rambling, incoherent statement he apparently gave at the time of the girls’ disappearance. The fact that the police then did not feel fit to charge him with anything tells you volumes: they didn’t believe him in the immediate aftermath of the crime– why would different police 40 years later have better judgement? There is also a sketch of a suspicious male seen in the mall on the day of the disappearance. Once again, police at the time did not regard Welch as a suspect, but the police today assert that he strongly resembles the sketch.
The police get to put a massive feather in their caps. They hate it when they have to stand in front of the public and admit they couldn’t solve the disappearance and probable murder of any child. Just hate it. They have ample motivation to fudge this investigation, proclaim themselves victorious and award themselves medals.
The sad part is how tempting it must be for the Lyon family to believe them.
Even sadder: a recent book calls the police work “a masterpiece of interrogation”. Well, that it is, having achieved the desire result.
[I haven’t read the book. I just scanned through a dozen reviews and, as I surmised, not one of them alludes to any kind of physical evidence; Mark Bowden seems dazzled by the success of the police in befuddling Welch into making stupid admissions with which the police threaten to seek the death penalty. I hope Welch acknowledged (it is suggested he did, obliquely) that without any corroborating physical evidence they really don’t have a case. They have a psycho.]