In 2013, detectives reopened the cold case of Katherine and Sheila Lyon. As reported by Bethesda Magazine, they pored over case files that included interviews, witness statements, and sketches of the possible suspects. They focused on a man named Lloyd Lee Welch, who gave a statement to the authorities back in 1975 when he was just 18 years old. In his interview, Welch stated that he witnessed the Lyon sisters’ abduction and provided an overly detailed account of what happened.

Back then, authorities didn’t focus on Welch, as they assumed that he approached the police with a false statement in order to collect the reward money, per The Washington Post. Detectives who were working on the cold case noticed that Welch had a resemblance to one of the composite sketches of the possible abductor back in the ’70s. They looked further into his whereabouts, and they discovered that he was serving time in prison for molesting a minor. Detectives visited Welch in prison to see whether they could find a link between him and Katherine and Sheila’s case.