Rockvillegaz 021214

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HEARTSTRING THEORY

The Gazette

Versatile performer views love on a scientific plane. B-5

ROCKVILLE | ASPEN HILL | WHEATON

DAILY UPDATES ONLINE www.gazette.net

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Can Metro and BRT play nice in Town Center? n

a new lead Cold case has

City trying to figure out where new transit system will fit in BY

ELIZABETH WAIBEL STAFF WRITER

25 cents

CHIEF IDENTIFIES CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER WHO MAY HAVE HAD CONTACT WITH LYON SISTERS, MISSING SINCE 1975

Sheila (left) and Katherine Lyon went missing almost 39 years ago, in 1975.

The county has high hopes for a bus rapid transit system that will intersect with Metro lines, but building a transit utopia isn’t as easy as plunking a few extra large buses down on Rockville Pike. The city of Rockville is launching a study to figure out how bus rapid transit might best fit around the Rockville Metro station in Town Center. Andrew Gunning, assistant director of Rockville’s planning department, said the city wants some good design ideas that it can promote at the state and county level. “We need to get in front of this,” he said. “... Our concerns in the Town Center are not necessarily something that would be on their radar.” The county’s plan for bus rapid transit, or BRT, has three corridors converging at or near the

See TOWN CENTER, Page A-12

BILL RYAN/THE GAZETTE

Katie Ledecky, of Stone Ridge, laps the other swimmers in the girls 500-yard freestyle in the Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming Championships on Saturday.

DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE

Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger (center) points to a police mug shot of Lloyd Lee Welch. Police said they believe Welch was at Wheaton Plaza the day the Lyon sisters went missing in 1975 and may have had contact with them. At left is FBI Special Agent Steve Vogt.

Ledecky sets an American record

BY

‘These things don’t happen, we thought, in Montgomery County’

STAFF WRITER

Stone Ridge junior became first woman to break 4 minute, 30 second mark in 500-yard freestyle n

BY JENNIFER BEEKMAN STAFF WRITER

The few minutes between the end of warmups and the start of a swimming championship is usually a time when swimmers focus inward, get themselves in the right frame of mind for the upcoming competition. Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart junior Katie Ledecky spent those moments at Saturday’s Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving championships signing autographs for and taking pictures with young fans who approached her on the Germantown Indoor Swim center pool deck. The 2012 Olympic gold medalist didn’t even turn away admirers that horded around her on occasion in between her events — ultimately Stone Ridge coach Robert Walker escorted them away until after the meet — and when everything was said and done Saturday, after swimming four

ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH

Montgomery County Police are hoping to find out more about Lloyd Lee Welch, a convicted sex offender, and his possible connection to the disappearance of Sheila and Katherine Lyon almost 39 years ago from Wheaton Plaza. Police say they have confirmed he was at the mall the day the girls disappeared.

See LEDECKY, Page A-12

Police shed new light on an almost 39-year-old missing person case Tuesday when they identified a convicted sex offender they believe may have had contact with two Kensington girls the day they disappeared. The girls, Sheila and Katherine Lyon, ages 12 and 10, walked to Wheaton Plaza, as it was known at the time, for lunch on March 25, 1975, and vanished. At a press conference Tuesday, Montgomery County Police identified 57-year-old Lloyd Lee Welch, a convicted sex offender, and said they have confirmed he was at the mall the day the girls disappeared. Investigators have traveled to Delaware, where Welch is serving a prison sentence for raping young girls, to talk to him, Assistant Police Chief Russell Hamill said. Chief J. Thomas Manger declined to comment on how those interviews have gone and what police have learned in them. Welch has served jail time for

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1975 case in which two girls disappeared shattered sense of safety n

BY SARAH SCULLY AND ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH STAFF WRITERS

The story of a disappearance almost 39 years ago has haunted Montgomery County, resurfacing periodically with remembrances or potential leads to a still unsolved crime. Two young girls walking a half-mile to the Wheaton Plaza were never seen again. On March 25, 1975, the Lyon sisters went to the mall for pizza and window shopping. They vanished, shattering a sense

See COUNTY, Page A-12 multiple convictions of sexual offenses and raping young girls in Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware, Manger said. He has not been charged in connection with the Lyons’ case. “If we were able to charge

someone, we would have done it,” Manger said. According to police, witnesses from that day told investigators they saw Welch “paying

See LYON, Page A-12

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