The Last Stone

A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation

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Pub Date 02 Apr 2019 | Archive Date 02 Apr 2019
Grove Atlantic | Atlantic Monthly Press

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Description

On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyon, age 10 and 12, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, D.C. As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and mystery endured. Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware.

As a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper, Mark Bowden covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind.

On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyon, age 10 and 12, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, D.C. As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780802147301
PRICE $27.00 (USD)
PAGES 304

Average rating from 75 members


Featured Reviews

This is a book about the power of perseverance on the part of many people. Almost 44 years ago, on the 29th March, 1975 two young sisters went to the mall and never returned. Although their parents continued to wait patiently for local law enforcement to find out what happened to their daughters the case wasn't solved and gradually sank to the bottom of the pile.

With the advances in science and the resurrection of many cold cases however, in 2013 it became active again with five experienced detectives concentrating on its resolution. The story of their dogged determination to see this case through to a conclusion is brilliantly put together by Mark Bowden who reported on the initial disappearances and was ultimately able to bring things to a close in this excellent book.

Bowden was able to draw extensively on the years of recordings made of the interrogations of convicted child molester Lloyd Welch, as well as those conducted with his family. He was then able to show how things finally began to come together as the experienced team worked tirelessly to sift through the lies and misleading half-truths to reach a outcome worse than any fiction.

I was able to read an advanced copy of this book thanks to Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an unbiased review and would recommend it to anyone true crime aficionado who enjoys the minutiae of investigations and the dismantling of the psyche of those who practice to deceive.

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