Maryland

Man Convicted in '75 Lyon Sister Slayings Pleads Guilty to Sex Assaults

"He's the dirt that I walk on," one victim told News4

A convicted sex offender who was sentenced last week to 48 years in in the 1975 killings of two young Maryland sisters has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two other girls in northern Virginia in 1996.

Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. entered his guilty pleas Thursday in Prince William Circuit Court as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors to resolve the 1996 cases as well as the 1975 slayings of 10-year-old Katherine and 12-year-old Sheila Lyon.

In court Thursday, both victims in the 1996 assaults told Welch the attacks traumatized them.

One victim told him she became "destructive and self-hating," but eventually turned her life around. She told Welch: "Checkmate, I win!"

Welch apologized before he was sentenced to 12 years.

"I'm angry. I'm scared," one of the two victims, Ashley Welch, told News4's Meagan Fitzgerald.

Ashley Welch said she wanted to come forward because she believes there could be more victims.

"If there are more victims out there, I absolutely believe that they should come forward," Ashley Welch said.

She said she met Lloyd Welch when she was 6 years old and thought he was a nice man until one night in March of 1996.

"For some strange reason when I woke up, he was in my bed," Ashley Welch said.

It wasn't until a few years ago, when police began investigating Lloyd Welch for the murders of the Lyon sisters that she realized he was her cousin.

"The fact that it was a family member is just even more horrific. It's just - it's pitiful. It's sad. He's just -- like I said, he's the dirt that I walk on," she said.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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