On March 25, 1975, Sheila and Katherine Lyon were heading to see the Easter exhibits in Westfield Wheaton shopping mall which was located about half mile away from their home and have lunch at the Orange Bowl. The sisters left home approximately between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM, and they were commanded by their mother to return home by 4:00 PM. Witnesses spotted the two girls in the mall at 1:00 PM and a boy, who lived in their neighborhood, knew the sisters and said he saw the sisters together outside the Orange Bowl speaking with a strange man wearing a brown suit, who is about 6 feet tall and 55 years old. The man was bearing a briefcase with a tape recorder, surrounded by children. The witness’s illustration of the man made authorities believe the unknown person as a prime suspect in the case and different sketches of the person’s face were created. Some people recognized few sketches made about this person carrying the briefcase and reported to the police. Few weeks earlier, reports released by the press showed a man identical to the sketch, at the Marlow Heights Shopping Center and the Iverson Mall, which were close to Prince George’s Country, Maryland. The reports say that the man was approaching young girls to read answering machines messages into his microphone. The police found this sketchy to be related to the case, as they thought there was no direct relationship between the reports and the sisters’ disappearance. As weeks passed on, large volunteer groups went on the search for the sisters, and about 122 National Guardsmen were called to take part in this quest. However, no sign of the girls was ever discovered. There were some false leads in the case. …show more content…
One which happened about two weeks after the Lyon Sister’s disappearance, on April 7, 1975, a witness spotted the sisters in the back seat of a beige 1968 Ford station wagon. When the driver of the Ford station wagon revealed the witness tailgating him, he ran a red light and drove on Route 234 towards Interstate 66 in VA. The Ford wagon had Maryland plates with characters “DMT-6” but the last two were not known due to the car plate’s dent. A car with these combination was never found. The second false lead was calls, to the Lyon’s family, from people claiming to have the sisters and put in an offer to trade the girls for ransom money. However, one call made on April 4, 1975, seemed so believable where the man requested John Lyon to leave a briefcase with $10,000 in a courthouse restroom in Annapolis, Maryland. The man never picked the briefcase and did not return in touch with the family. After