The Last Stone

by Mark Bowden

  Lloyd was clad now in bright orange, the color for inmates in lockdown or, in his case, protective custody. His days were spent in isolation. He had lost his kitchen job. He looked ill. He had noticeably lost weight. He looked mad enough to spit. He started complaining as soon as he saw Mark and Katie.

  “You all put out there that two children are missing, so the first thing that goes through their minds is, ‘Let’s kill him,’” he said. “I mean, there’s judgment all the way around. I didn’t kill nobody. I wasn’t involved in anything like that!”

  Katie ignored his outburst. She told him, in so many words, that she didn’t feel sorry for him, and was done giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Let’s just cut out all the shit,” she said. “We talked to people. I just met a woman who had a kid with you. You failed that [polygraph] because there is something that you are not telling the truth about. Period. Let’s just cut all of the shit out, there is a lot of stuff you told me that’s not true. I have been all over this country, we have been all over this country. Do you know that you had a child that died, a female child? Does that ring a bell? Charlene? You knew she was pregnant when you left her and went to Baltimore with some fifteen-year-old chick. You knew she was pregnant.”

  “I went to Baltimore with some fifteen-year-old chick?”

  “Yeah. Pam or some chick that was living in the trailer park. She [Charlene] walked in and found you sleeping with her. I mean this woman, you left her pregnant, she had a kid and suffered her whole life with this child that was ill, and with no help from you. No nothing. The kid died.”

  “I didn’t know she was pregnant! How could I have known she was pregnant?”

  “I mean, you have kids all over the place.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah. I probably know more of your kids than you do at this point.”

  “Wow! How many I got?”

  “A lot, a lot.”

  “Yeah?” Lloyd looked proud.

  “Do you remember Charlene? Cici? She was very visibly pregnant when you left her. She was twenty. You told her she was too old and you were looking for somebody younger.”

  He denied it. Mark mentioned the name of a local pastor in South Carolina who had known him and had corroborated Charlene’s story.

  “I didn’t leave with no fifteen-year-old girl; they can make [up] all the lies that they want.”

  “Why would they?” asked Katie. “Everybody can’t be wrong. Everybody can’t be lying. These are people that haven’t spoken with anybody. They saw the report on the news, and they thought, ‘Oh gosh, let me tell them about my experience.’ I thought you were a decent guy. Every single female I talked to said you beat the shit out of her. And every dude I met told me that you like to beat up girls. Why would everybody lie?”

  “Wow, maybe because I did something to them and they didn’t like it,” Lloyd offered, lamely.

  “But there are a million things they can make up. They can say you are a dirtbag. Or they can say you are a thief. They can say you are a cheater.”

  Katie asked him about a pickup line he used on a woman in Myrtle Beach in the mid-1980s: “You want to go halves on a baby?”

  Lloyd loosed his favorite exclamation—“Wow!”—then, “That was a good one!”

  “Charming,” said Katie.

  “You were with Keelie then, weren’t you?” Mark asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s not true,” said Mark. “This is where we get into trouble. Because you lie about everything. You got married to Keelie on January third, nineteen eighty-five. You were married to her; she was pregnant when you got married.”

  Mark then walked Lloyd through a list of women and places.

  “Believe whatever you want,” said Lloyd. “I don’t care.”

  “It’s not a matter of believing,” said Mark. “It’s what the evidence tells me.”

  “Let’s cut the bull,” said Lloyd, repeating Katie’s directive in spirit if not word for word. “Charge me, or let me go back to my cell. It’s as simple as that.”

  LET THE LIES CATCH UP

  But Lloyd made no move to leave. If the squad had worried that shaming him publicly might shut him up, it had the opposite effect.

  With the heat turned up, he now had no choice. As he neared the home stretch of his long prison term, freedom was something he could taste. Prior to this collision with the Lyon squad, the path had seemed clear. His prison mental-health report had all but pronounced him rehabilitated. “Mr. Welch took advantage of the treatment opportunities available within the prison to come to an understanding of the problems that led to [his] offense,” it read, its author either asleep or completely taken in. “Mr. Welch seems to have developed deep insight, empathy, and remorse for his victim’s pain and suffering.” The report recommended that he be placed in a “transitional setting” in order to begin preparation “for a gradual release into society.” Any tie to this terrible old crime would scotch that plan. So Lloyd was stuck. In order to maintain his position as a witness, not a doer, he had to stay on top of this investigation, and the only way to do that was to keep meeting with the detectives. Knowledge gave him leverage. As long as he could sell the detectives a narrative they liked, one that gave them what they were looking for, he had a chance. It was a delicate balancing act. If he admitted too much—being in any way involved with the kidnapping, being around when the girls were being abused—he was done. If he admitted too little, as with his earlier claim to have never been in Wheaton Plaza, and they found something to contradict him, he was done. The sessions were perilous but vital.

  Mark, in particular, seemed to get this. He showed no sympathy for Lloyd whatsoever. He badgered him with the falsehoods and inconsistencies in his stories. He also liberally exaggerated the evidence against him.

  “We found a lot of cases that are all across Maryland, South Carolina, Florida. All these cases around Wheaton, Takoma Park, that look like they’ve got your name on them. Rapes. Girls have disappeared. Girls that have been found murdered.”

  “Hold. Hold. Hold,” Lloyd protested, raising his hand.

  “No, this is the truth, Lloyd. We have all the old evidence. All the old fingerprints, DNA samples, stuff that was never analyzed. Because back in the seventies they didn’t have DNA analysis. But we kept all that evidence. Now it is all getting compared. And it’s not just going to be us saying that you did it. That’s evidence, Lloyd.”

  Mark was bluffing. None of this was true. The detectives had taken a stab at locating old physical evidence of crimes committed in Montgomery County in the 1970s. They had found nothing more than heaps of moldy boxes the police department had stored in an old garage. None of it had been catalogued or kept in order—no one at the time foresaw much use for doing so. A further effort would be made to find, sort, and mine this material, but it hadn’t even gotten under way, and the chances of its yielding anything useful were small.

  “Okay, show me the evidence,” said Lloyd. “I am tired. I only got two sex charges.”

  “It’s not a matter of what you got charged with, Lloyd. That’s not how you keep track. It’s what you actually did. You got away with a lot, but it is catching up to you now.”

  Katie reminded him that when Dave and Chris had come to him in October, they had not been trying to build a case against him. They had just been looking for information.

  “If I knew I would have told you.”

  “Lloyd, you know,” she said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You may not have been the one that did it, but you know, and you know we know,” she said. “That polygraph shows you know. The truth is, I don’t even think you can keep up with your lies anymore. It’s got to be exhausting; it has to be. And at some point, you have to break down and give yourself a chance to show some humanity. To these old people who have never been able to bury their kids, who’d like to die in peace knowing that these kids got proper burying. And that’s all I asked you that day, �
��Tell me where they are, and let’s get this done.’ And this shit storm has started because of that. That’s all we wanted to know when we came in here. They were willing to give you a deal; they were willing to cut you out and say, ‘Okay, he is a changed man. He came forward he did the right thing.’ Thirty-nine years today. And instead you tied our hands. Now the shit storm has started. And the bottom line is, you still have a chance to do the right thing and tell us where these girls are. Or where you think they are, because there is nothing in this world that’s going to convince anybody that you don’t know.”

  She said she had no interest in trying to charge him with past crimes against women.

  “I don’t want to be their victims’ rights advocate. I want to know where those girls are buried. That’s what I want out of this whole situation. And instead, because you want to play games, because you know, Lloyd, you know, you know. The polygraph says you know, your body language says you know. Your lies are catching up with you.”

  “Let the lies catch up,” he said. “I don’t know where they are. I am going to keep on telling you that. And I would love for them [the Lyon family] to know. I would, I really honestly would.”

  Katie said, “Let me ask you, when I sat here and said to you, ‘What’s it going to take? What is it going to take for you to just tell us?’ And I gave you some options in terms of the deals they were giving you. And you were into that. You wanted to hear more about it, you said, ‘Okay, if this is what we do, then I might go back to my cell and have a memory.’ What was that?”

  Lloyd pleaded again that long years of drinking and drugs had eroded his memory. Katie scoffed. Why, if he couldn’t remember anything, did he keep angling for a deal? How was he able to come up with such detailed recollections of the things he did admit? Why had he confided something new to Dave at the end of their last session?

  “Just be real with us for five minutes,” she said.

  “I am being real! I don’t know where. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Katie tried flattery again. She told Lloyd she considered him an extremely intelligent man: “People who have PhDs probably aren’t as street-smart as you are. This is a game of chess to you, and you are just waiting to see our move.”

  She walked him through some of his past, the women who said he had abused them, his history of arrests. Mark reiterated how assiduously the FBI and his own department were now gathering evidence against him.

  “Because that’s the choice you made,” he said. “Now, I can put the skids on that. I have the power to do that. But it has to start with you. And it doesn’t start with you continuing to lie to us. It’s time for the truth, Lloyd. Beyond any doubt, we know you were there that day. And you had something to do with the girls’ disappearance. There is no doubt about that with any of us.”

  Lloyd asked, why, if he had been involved in kidnapping two little girls, would he have brought Helen with him?

  “There is nothing to say that you did, other than your word,” said Mark. “And you have lied about everything. Why would we believe that? And the witnesses at the mall never saw Helen. They saw only you.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ nothing else. I am done saying things. You all are not believing anything I am saying.”

  But, again, he stayed put.

  Mark reminded him of the option Karen Carvajal had presented him a month earlier. Maybe he wasn’t fully culpable. Perhaps he had been used to help lure the girls without knowing what was in store.

  “If there was somebody else who was there, you need to tell us who it was,” he said. He said he was amazed that Lloyd had carried this secret for so long. “There’s some reason this is weighing very heavily on you. I can try and move you to a facility where no one knows you and doesn’t know [i.e., and no one knows] all of this shit. I am willing to go forward. But you have to give me something, man, this has to be a two-way street.”

  Lloyd wouldn’t budge—yet.

  HE IS A MOTHERFUCKER

  “Can we clarify the last time when Dave talked to you, and you said you saw them the following day at that house naked in the basement?” asked Mark.

  “Yeah, I did say that.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  Lloyd paused for a moment, then said, “Yeah.”

  “You had to think about that.”

  “It’s the truth. I seen two girls. I don’t know if it was them two girls or not. I told him that.”

  “And whose house was that?”

  “I don’t remember the guy’s name.”

  “But how did you know that guy?”

  “We used to party all the time. I used to party with a lot of people up in Maryland. I had a cousin named Billy. I don’t know if you all know him or not. He is probably dead. He introduced me to a lot of people. He lived near, in Prince Georges County. He lived near Uncle Dickie and them. Did you meet Uncle Dickie?”

  “Yes, we talked to Uncle Dickie.”

  “I am sure he has a lot of good stuff for you,” said Lloyd, balefully. This was the first hint that he now believed his extended family was working against him. His manner had changed. The threat of a broader FBI investigation and of new charges, Mark’s bluffs, had apparently got him thinking. Was there some new, safer ground he could find? If he had seen something important—this was what he’d suggested to Dave at the end of the polygraph session—he would once again become a valuable witness, not a target.

  Katie noticed the change. She said Lloyd’s body language showed he was being deceptive and suggested that he was scared. Both suppositions were clearly true.

  “Is it, you are afraid to tell us?” suggested Mark. “Is that what it is?”

  “It could be.”

  “Okay, that’s fair,” said Mark. He was getting somewhere. “I can understand that. That’s reasonable. So let’s deal with that.”

  “I’ve dealt with some pretty nasty cops.”

  “What are you afraid of?” asked Katie. “Let’s start with that. Tell us. Are you afraid it’s going to hang you up in something, or are you afraid that whoever is involved is going to do something? Let’s just start with what you are afraid of.”

  “I don’t know if the person is still alive or not,” he said.

  “And are you afraid of the person?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How in the hell are they going to hurt you in here?”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

  “Okay, tell us so we can fix that,” said Katie.

  “My kids.”

  “How would they know about your kids?” Mark asked. “You don’t even know where your kids are.”

  “He is a motherfucker.”

  Mark pointed out that Lloyd’s children all went by different last names. The detectives had great difficulty finding them, even with all the tools available to the police. “Some average Joe out there on the street is not going to find your kids.”

  “It’s not so much my kids,” said Lloyd. “It’s my family and stuff like that.”

  “Lloyd, the thing is, I think this is the first time you said something that I actually one hundred percent believe,” said Katie. “I believe that. That’s a legitimate concern of yours. But that person does not know, especially if that person has seen this on media, they do not know what you have told us.”

  “I don’t even know if the person is alive or not,” said Lloyd.

  “All right,” said Mark. “Then there’s a good chance it’s not even an issue.”

  “Why don’t you tell us the person’s name, and we can figure it out?” suggested Katie. “We can make a phone call now and see if that person is alive. We will have Dave figure it out in minutes. He’s a computer whiz, unlike myself.”

  “My cousin Teddy still alive?” he asked.

  “What’s his last name?” asked Katie.

  “It would be Teddy Welch, the same as mine.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mark. His mind was racing. Did they know anything about Teddy?
“Did he live in PG [Prince Georges] County?”

  “He used to,” said Lloyd. “I don’t know if he does anymore or not.”

  Lloyd explained that Teddy was his uncle Dick’s son, or he thought so. He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen him or most other members of his family in decades, and they had never been close. “Find out if he is still alive or not.”

  “I am pretty sure he is alive,” said Mark. “We haven’t talked to him, but I am sure he is alive because when we talked to Dickie and Patty [Dick’s wife], they mentioned him.”

  “Is he the one you are worried about?” asked Katie.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So he’s the key to this whole situation?” she asked.

  “He’s one of ’em,” Lloyd said.

  “So what was his role?” asked Mark.

  “Him and the other guy was the ones who grabbed them.”

  Here was his new safe ground. He knew the kidnappers and had seen them take the girls but had not himself been with them or involved. Lloyd again insisted that he had gone to the mall with Helen to look for work.

  “Helen wasn’t there; we know that,” said Mark.

  “She was.”

  “I mean, again, we are making progress with the honesty—”

  “I am being honest,” said Lloyd. “She was there.”

  “Her sister doesn’t think she was,” said Mark, “and your stepmother doesn’t think she was.”

  Lloyd held fast. But he was willing to talk more about his cousin Teddy, offering yet another version of what he saw that day.

  “I saw them leaving with two girls. I don’t know if it was them two [Sheila and Kate] or not, because I wasn’t really close to them. But I did see them leave with two girls. A couple of days later the girls were missing.”

  “How were they walking off?” asked Mark. “Did they look like they were forcibly walking off?”