by Mark Bowden
“Oh Lord, this is goin’—I can see myself gettin’ charged now.”
“Nah, no. No. Listen, look, we’re not here to build a case against you.”
“Right.”
Dave talked about what an “animal” Mileski had been, how he had killed his own wife and child. He soothed Lloyd by telling him how impressed he was, that before they’d met he had imagined Lloyd as very “harsh” and “disturbed.”
“But I come into this room. I sit down with you. You’re drinking coffee, we’re getting ready to have lunch, and I’ve got to be honest with you. I like you. But I have to stay neutral and take my personal feeling away from you. And when you can remember all this stuff but you can’t remember this,” pointing to the statement, “like I said, you sit on this side of the table and you start to say—”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t look good. I mean, you know, it makes it look like maybe you did have something to do with it.”
“Right.”
“And I don’t want to go down that route.”
Again, Lloyd pleaded that his brain had been addled by drugs. His memory had holes. But when he recognized the futility of denying his old police statement, it abruptly recovered.
“Me and him were not together,” he said. “Let’s get that straight, right? Me and him were not together. Me and Helen went to the mall and was looking for work. I don’t remember the day or anything like that. I honestly … but me and him were not together. Oh Lord, please don’t put us together.” He laughed nervously. “Please! I did a lot of bad shit in my life, but I’ve never hurt anybody.” He admitted what he had done to the little girl, the crime that had landed him in jail, “but as far as literally kidnapping somebody or allegedly getting involved with something like that and literally seeing somebody get hurt, I couldn’t do it.”
Dave offered, “There’s no doubt in my mind that not only were you there that day and saw them in the mall, but I think your interpretation of what you remember with the black car and the two girls is one and the same.” He was giving Lloyd permission here to simply merge the two stories. “You can put this asshole in the middle of what we already know because you were there. That’s the best way I can explain it. You are fighting it right now because I think you are trying to determine what is the right thing and what’s the wrong thing because you have to protect yourself.”
Lloyd squirmed in his chair. They had been talking for three hours. He was floundering. He kept talking affably but with mounting incoherence.
“I mean, I’m not saying he wasn’t at the mall that day, and I’m not saying I didn’t see him that day, it’s just that I can’t honestly remember seeing that asshole or something like that, that happened.” Lloyd had picked up Dave’s use of the word asshole to refer to Mileski and immediately offered it back, something that would become a pattern. He continued, “Now as time goes on, and I start—because now this is bringing fresh to my memory of remembering stuff—I might be able to, but you gotta figure I got almost forty years of time behind me.”
They took a break for food. The session was wearing on Lloyd. Left alone again, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and put his head into his hands. He sighed heavily, “Oh man!” Then again, head bent to his cuffed hands, “Oh man!” His head was down for long minutes until Chris brought him a meal from McDonald’s.
When Dave resumed, after conferring with his colleagues, he said they all believed Lloyd was withholding information. They believed not only that he knew Mileski, but that he had worked with Mileski to kidnap Sheila and Kate Lyon.
“It’s weird that there’s an association,” Dave said. “And that’s the best way I can put it. I know you told me a couple of times that you guys weren’t together, but there was an association. I mean, maybe, who the hell knows? Maybe you decided to look for a job, and this clown was there and doing his thing. We’re here—guy’s dead—and that’s gonna be the focus of this investigation from here on out.”
Lloyd continued to insist that he had nothing to do with Mileski and had no memory of seeing him at the mall. They went around and around.
“Even if you could just give me that little bit, well, yeah, I was in the mall,” Dave said, almost pleading. “We know you were in the mall because you gave a statement. And you’re thinking, man, even if I associate myself with that, I can be looking at additional time, and that’s not—we’re not here to jam Lloyd Welch up.”
Dave showed him pictures of others who were in Mileski’s circle, and he did not recognize any of them. Mileski was just the guy who had taken him to Helen’s house once or twice. Dave leaned on him harder and harder. Lloyd could either be a witness or a suspect, his choice. He showed again the old police sketch, and Danette Shea’s old statement about being followed and stared at. Then Dave laid out more explicitly their theory: Mileski groomed teenage boys, like Lloyd, to help him pick up little girls. If Lloyd would help them make that case, he might avoid being charged himself.
“That’s the thing,” insisted Lloyd. “The only time I ever saw that person was at that church and he never, ever offered me anything. He never said I want you to do this for me.”
Lloyd talked on, making little sense. One minute he would repeat the Takoma Park story, and in the next breath acknowledge that the older statement was his. Then he began to recall more details about the day: how he and Helen had arrived, by bus; where they had applied for jobs; where they’d stopped to eat. But he continued to stress that he had no connection to Mileski.
“I can’t honestly say that I saw him at the mall,” he said. “I ain’t gonna lie about it.” He firmly denied following girls. “I’m baffled,” he said.
The detective and the inmate kept at it for an hour more. There was a curious contradiction to Lloyd. He kept denying that he knew anything but also kept hinting that he could tell Dave more if he chose.
Dave kept trying to make the Mileski connection.
“I think in the back of your mind, if you did ID him as the person in the mall, you’re saying, ‘I’m fucked.’ Because you put yourself in the mall already. You put yourself with this guy, and if you ID him as the one with the girls, you’re thinking, ‘Man, that dude across that table is gonna fuckin’ walk out of here, and in about six months I’m gonna be looking at how much more additional time.’ Tell me I’m not right?”
“Yeah, you are right,” said Lloyd, laughing. “I done told you, that piece of paper I signed in there with you, that could be torn up, and my name could be signed on a new piece of paper.”
“I wouldn’t do anything crazy like that.”
“No, no, I’m just saying. I mean, you gotta look at my perspective. Right? Yeah, I’m incarcerated. Okay, this guy’s dead. Well, okay, we can pin this on somebody else and boom!”
They were at an impasse.
“We’re stuck,” said Dave.
“Right.”
“I’m just putting it all out there for you. We need you, and we’re not here to say okay, you ID this guy and we’re gonna run out of here and say thank you and then turn around and charge you. That’s not the goal here. What the hell will that do for me? You’re already in jail.”
“Right.”
“I don’t get a bonus. It doesn’t do anything for me.”
Lloyd laughed.
“You know what I’m saying? I think we both have established that you’re only gonna give up so much because you have an absolute right to protect yourself, and I get that.”
“But, see, the thing is, I’m trying to do the right thing,” said Lloyd. “I’m trying to change my life around and get out and live a good life and have a normal life, and if I can take this mind of mine and push everything that happened thirtyeight years ago and push it all up front and give you the information right now, I would. I didn’t think about it until I sat down in this office. Actually, I didn’t think about it until we got back in that van there from the prison, and I said, ‘Where the hell am I going?’ And they said, ‘Dover P
olice Department. Goin’ for an interview.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell? An interview?’ And that’s when it all started coming together. And then I’m like, ‘Oh shit, they’re gonna pin some shit on me.’ And it ran through my mind.”
“Yeah, it has to.”
“You know?”
“I mean it. It absolutely has to.”
Lloyd complained bitterly about his experience with the law, how unjust his current sentence was.
“I was kind of surprised,” said Dave. “It’s a lot of time.”
“I mean, the medical records show that the girl was a virgin. All’s I did was put my little finger in, put my tongue in, I ate her, and that was it! I got thirty-three years! You know? I’ve talked to guys who have literally raped women, literally raped kids and stuff like that, and they did ten to fifteen years. So, yeah. It worries me. I ain’t gonna lie. It worries me. Yeah, I feel like I’m going to get railroaded for sure. I feel like I’m gonna do this time because he’s dead. For something that I didn’t do.”
Lloyd complained that he was tired. He’d been awakened early. Perhaps if he had time to rest he might be able to remember more.
“Somehow, we need to take that next step,” said Dave. He explained that the department already had some ideas about where the girls might be buried—he was referring to the basement of Mileski’s old house. “If you can say he was in the mall, that would give us the ability to go out and look for those girls.”
“Even if I think about it and relax my mind and get a good night’s sleep, and it all starts coming back to me, I couldn’t tell where he put them or what he did to them.”
“I’m going to put this out to you,” Dave said. “We don’t have any hard-core evidence on anyone. None. So what your role or no role or full involvement is, only you will know. So if you came to me and said, ‘All right, enough’s enough, I’m gonna tell you just this little much: I know that guy; I know him by name; I was in the mall with him; he took those girls.’ That would give us enough to go find where we think they are, to spend the money, to fill the paperwork out and justify doing what we need to do to find these girls. It would have no bearing on you because you didn’t give us any knowledge.”
Lloyd said he didn’t have the answers they wanted.
“Think about it,” he said. “If I was in cahoots with somebody to take two little girls, why’d I stop at them two little girls? I’m just a stupid person who got myself caught up in this.” He agreed that he’d probably stared at girls that day in the mall. “I mean, I was young. I probably did!”
“I appreciate that,” said Dave. “If I were to say, are you holding out on me because you’re worried about being charged with it? Answer that honestly so I can get a judgment call on maybe what we need to try to do next.”
Lloyd offered to take a polygraph to show his innocence.
“I ain’t gonna lie. I’m scared to death. I mean if you brought a piece of paper in here that [said] I wasn’t going to be charged with anything, would I believe that piece of paper? No. No. For the simple reason, ’cause you’d go right down the hall and tear it right up. And it disappears. And it disappears, and now you’ve got Lloyd Welch going to court in Maryland and getting all kinds of time. I mean, I don’t want to sound cruel. No. I really seriously want to help you, but I am scared to death.”
Dave made a suggestion: “If I were to try and come up with a solution—and I can’t make any promises, just as I can’t threaten you in any way. I just need to know what I have to work with.” He didn’t want to go through the process of obtaining blanket immunity for Lloyd unless he had something material to offer. If he did, “Would you have additional information? There’s no sense in me trying to sell something to somebody if you don’t have anything to offer.”
Lloyd suggested that he was prepared to give Dave exactly what he’d correctly divined the squad was after.
“I’ll put it to you this way,” he said. “He [Mileski] was in the mall. Okay? And I’ll leave it at that.”
“Okay, that’s fair enough. That’s what I need to know.”
“I’ll put it to you that way. In all honestly, I’ll put it to you this way. He was in the mall. I was not with him.”
Most people caught in a lie are ashamed, but not Lloyd. He was utterly unfazed. Most people made excuses. Lloyd, apart from his repeated plea of faulty memory, did not seem to feel any were necessary. He just slid into a completely different story, and then pretended—and sometimes insisted—that it was what he had said all along. It was just another item on a growing list of his peculiarities. Dave didn’t call him on it. He just wanted Lloyd to keep talking.
Dave presented the old arrest photo, the one showing the mustache Lloyd claimed he hadn’t grown until decades later. “Oh, so I am starting to get a mustache!” he said. “But I shaved it off.” Again, his previous false statement, about which he had made a show of certainty, was ignored. He stared at the photo. “Wow, that’s me!”
After five hours they took another break. Dave conferred with the others. This was tricky. If Lloyd were just a witness, someone who had seen Mileski leave the mall with the girls, then his statement would be invaluable, and he would need no immunity. The fact that he was insisting on immunity as the price for going ahead deepened their suspicions about him. If they offered him immunity now, it would prevent them from using anything he said against him—and they had no one else! They wanted his statement badly, but the price was too high—precisely because he was asking for it. When Dave came back he told Lloyd that he and his colleagues might be willing to give him blanket immunity in return for useful information, but first they would need permission from the Lyon family.
“It’s not a done deal yet,” the detective said. “It’s gonna be a hard selling point.”
“Yeah, because they want to charge me.”
“Well, no.”
“Let’s be honest.”
“No, they [his colleagues] don’t want to charge you. What they’re afraid of is, once they give you that letter they can’t take it away.”
Lloyd nodded.
“The state’s attorney is not saying that you’re involved in it right now,” Dave said, and then explained Pete’s reluctance to make the promise. What if further investigation revealed that Lloyd was responsible? The prosecutor would have tied his own hands. He would have been duped. “So it’s a hard selling point,” Dave said.
“I’m not involved in it,” said Lloyd, “and I stop talking as of now. You can send me on back to the corrections department. I was sitting here willing to talk freely, but I’m not involved with it. I never hurt nobody and don’t even want it thought of that I hurt somebody. That’s what I’m worried about.”
Dave scrambled. He was so close to getting the ID of Mileski that they had come for.
“That’s why we’re trying to solve it,” he said. “I went to him [Pete] and I said, ‘Let’s stop here, let’s do the paperwork to make him feel covered, because we’re not going to ever find him being in any way involved with it.’ You see what I’m saying? It’s a win-win for both of us. A win-win for you. A win-win for the whole damn thing. So let’s make this happen. Let’s make this work for everybody. I don’t think you’re involved.”
“You got me scared now.”
“No, no. I didn’t mean to do that. Maybe I explained it wrong. I didn’t mean it to come across that way. I was trying to say this is a good thing. We have to be able to protect you and us. That way we can sit down and we can put our feet up. I can get you a goddamn steak. We can talk about whatever the hell it is you have, and you’re protected, I’m protected. We’re at that point where I gotta respect you and what you have. You see what I’m saying? And I understand if I was in your situation, I’d do the same damn thing.”
“Yeah, because I’ve been screwed over so many times, man.”
“I hear you, I understand that.”
“And I told you, I don’t trust a lot of people.”
“Right, and why
would you?”
There ensued another long break. Despite his threat to demand a return to Smyrna, Lloyd stayed in his chair, waiting patiently for Dave to work out an agreement. The detective returned with a sheet of paper, a revision. Lloyd scanned it and pointed to a paragraph that allowed for the possibility that he had been involved in the crime.
“Why would they put that in there if I had no involvement?” he asked. He refused to sign it.
“I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t rape anybody. I didn’t do nothin’ to those girls. I mean, I really don’t have much to tell.”
For another hour, Dave was in and out of the room trying out different wording on him. He kept insisting that he was working on Lloyd’s behalf, trying to persuade a skeptical prosecutor that Lloyd was just a witness. Finally, he delivered a new document. It set forth six enumerated points: (1) Lloyd had agreed to talk to them about the Lyon case. (2) He had stated he was not involved. (3) “The immunity offered you is conditioned on your being truthful, candid, and complete.” (4) His statements would not be used against him “in any criminal proceeding.” (5) “This agreement does not grant you immunity for any crimes you may have committed against Sheila and Kate Lyon.” (6) No other promises or conditions had been set. There were some obvious contradictions here. The subject of their conversation would be a crime. The offer of immunity implied that Lloyd was somehow directly involved; that was the only reason to offer it. The document then went on to say that if he admitted that involvement, the agreement was void. The document effectively canceled itself out. Pete was trying to give Lloyd reassurance enough to keep him talking without giving him what he wanted.
Lloyd saw right through it. He heaved a heavy sigh.
“No, it’s a good one,” said Dave. “It’s basically saying you’re a witness. And I think everybody’s on the same page. We truly believe you were a witness to this, and anything that you tell us about this, you’re covered. Because you’re gonna tell us from a witness side, you see what I’m saying? And when we talk about it, I’m gonna make sure you tell us from a witness side instead of saying, ‘Hey I did this; hey, I did that.’ You didn’t do that. And I’ll remind you that you’re a witness in this case.”
