![]() ![]() In 1980, prosecutors in Pulaski County, Virginia, in the southwestern corner of the state - without any admission of responsibility from the defendant - succeeded in the commonwealth’s first “no body” murder conviction, only the fourth in U.S. The former carnival worker will likely be eligible for parole after 25 years, when Welch will be in his 80s, although Nance said his likelihood of being granted parole is “very slim, if nonexistent.” He is currently serving time in Delaware for attacking the same girl while she lived in that state. Welch was sentenced to 48 years in a Virginia prison for the Lyon sisters’ murders, and later pleaded guilty to an unrelated series of sexual assaults of a Prince William County, Virginia, girl. “Without those statements, Bedford County never would have been in a position to charge him, period.”īedford County prosecutors alleged Welch burned at least one of the sisters’ bodies in a fire on the property of his family members on Taylor’s Mountain, in Thaxton, Virginia.ĭuring more than eight interviews with Montgomery County detectives, Welch never acknowledged killing the girls, but he is still held responsible for their deaths under a 2017 plea agreement to felony murder. “The statements they elicited from Welch developed over time into a series of partial confessions,” Nance said. “With a lack of physical evidence, the Lyon sisters case would have stayed dormant,” without the breakthrough from Montgomery County detectives, according to Wes Nance, the Bedford County, Virginia prosecutor who convicted Lloyd Lee Welch. That confession came in a series of interviews with detectives from Montgomery County, Maryland. While prosecutors in the Welch case benefited from his admission, the defendant in Virginia’s first-ever “no body” case, Stephen Epperly, maintained - and continues to maintain - his innocence.Īlmost 40 years after 12-year-old Sheila and 10-year-old Katherine were last spotted at Wheaton Plaza, Welch admitted to leaving the mall with the girls. The extra challenge presented by lack of human remains complicates their ability to convince jurors, beyond a reasonable doubt, of a defendant’s guilt. The remains of the Lyon sisters have never been found, nor have the remains of Gina Renee Hall - the young woman voted “most popular” in her senior class at Coeburn High School, in southwestern Virginia - but prosecutors in the Lyon case were armed with something prosecutors in the Hall case never had: A confessionĮven today, prosecutors are often reluctant to try “no body” murder cases. WASHINGTON - Almost four decades before Lloyd Lee Welch pleaded guilty in 2017 to two counts of first-degree murder in the 1975 deaths of Sheila and Katherine Lyon, the disappearance of an 18-year-old Radford University freshman led to Virginia’s first “no body” murder conviction. 'Under the Trestle' author Ron Peterson tells the story of Virginia's first 'no-body' murder conviction.
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