Federal investigators have returned to the Virginia mountain woods linked to the chilling cold case murder of two young sisters who vanished nearly 50 years ago.
The FBI and US Marshals are back on Bedford County’s Taylor’s Mountain to search for clues following “new evidence” from a cold case, which they did not specify, The Washington Post reported.
The area, however, is infamously linked to the 1975 murder of 10-year-old Katherine and 12-year-old Sheila Lyon, whose bodies were never found after a sex offender abducted them and allegedly burned one of their remains on the mountain.
Local, state and federal officials declined to comment on the ongoing investigation at the mountains.
Officials had scoured the mountains twice already in relation to the case, once in 2015 and again in 2017, when convicted sex offender Lloyd Welch Jr. pleaded guilty to the murder of the two girls.
In 2015, Welch admitted to helping his father and uncle kidnap the Lyon sisters while they were out in Montgomery County, Maryland, to meet up with friends.
Welch, who insists he didn’t have an active role in the murders, told police he saw his father and uncle dismember one of the girls inside a dungeon-like basement and handed him the remains to dispose of.
Two cousins told police Welch arrived at a property on Taylor’s Mountain owned by his family with a bag containing bloody clothing and burned the remains, according to court filings.
Welch had become a person of interest in the case after a friend of the girls identified him as a man allegedly eyeing the sisters the day they disappeared.
The suspect has a long history of child sexual assault, with Welch convicted twice of molesting a 10-year-old girl in 1992 and in 1997.
During his 2017 sentencing for his role in the Lyon sisters’ death, Welch also pleaded guilty to two unrelated child sex assault cases in Prince William County, Va.
Welch is nearing the end of his sentence for the 1997 assault. When it ends in 2025, he will start his 48-year sentence for the Lyon sisters’ case.
Investigators were never able to gather enough evidence to charge anyone else.
