Unlike the “Tape Recorder Man” investigation, this image did not become a major part of the public search.
The sketch remained in the investigative records.
And there it stayed.
For years.
Then decades.
No one initially connected it with another young man who had appeared in the investigation shortly after the sisters disappeared.
His name was Lloyd Lee Welch Jr.
The young man who walked into the investigation
Welch was 18 years old when he came to the attention of investigators in 1975.
He told authorities that he had been at Wheaton Plaza on the day Sheila and Katherine disappeared and claimed to have information about what he had seen.
Police questioned him and administered a polygraph examination.
He failed the test and later acknowledged that portions of his account were false.
Investigators apparently regarded him as an unreliable witness and released him.
The significance of that encounter would not
