“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?”
“Teddy had his arm around one of them, and the other guy had his arm pulled in close to her. I don’t know who the guy was.”
“Like around her head, like a headlock type of deal?” asked Mark.
“More like her shoulders, pulling her in close.”
“Okay,” said Mark.
“How old do you think Teddy was back then?” asked Katie.
“I don’t know, maybe eighteen or twenty.”
“Okay, so he wasn’t their age,” said Katie. “He was older?”
“He was older.”
“Is he a bad dude?” Katie asked.
“He was.”
Lloyd insisted that he had just happened to be at the mall that day. They asked why he was afraid of Teddy.
“Because I seen him beat the crap out of somebody before. He has threatened my family a couple of times.”
“What family?” asked Mark.
“My sisters, my brothers, my kids. He said he will find them and he will kill them. Because I did see two girls at a home, like I said. That was true. I ran. I was scared. He knew I saw them.”
“How did he know?”
“Because he saw me.”
Lloyd said Teddy had come to his stepmother’s house that day, the day he had seen the girls drugged and being raped. He had threatened him.
“He called me out to the backyard,” said Lloyd. “Told me, ‘I know you saw me walk off with those girls. Don’t worry about it. You say anything, you can be hurt and your family can be hurt and your kids.’” (At that point, Lloyd had no children).
His story had taken a substantial turn. Teddy Welch and “the other guy” were the kidnappers. He did not know who the other guy was. Ray Mileski had been erased. Forget about what he had said earlier.
“Here is what I think,” said Mark. “If that is true—and I have a lot of concerns about it being true—but if that were true, I think you were there at the mall with them that day. Okay? And I think what I said a while ago about you knowing something more is that I think what happened is you got into something that day you didn’t realize was going to be as serious as it turns out. And maybe you broke off at some point when you realized that this is not where I need to be or want to be. And whatever happened to them after that happened. But there are big concerns that I have about it. And I have every version of your story so far. They don’t logically make sense. And I will tell you why. Why would you, if he pulled you out in the backyard and had this conversation and all, why would you go back to the mall and report whatever it is you reported you saw?”