Cases Old and Cold

[HairOfTheDog]

Welch, now 60 ^, a former carnival worker, was charged two years ago in the 1975 killings. He was already in prison in Delaware, having pleaded guilty in 1998 to molesting a 10-year-old girl.

If convicted at trial in Bedford of two counts of first-degree felony murder during "the commission of abduction with the intent to defile," he faced the possibility of the death penalty. That will probably be taken off the table with a guilty plea, but he'll never walk free again.

Welch was prosecuted in Bedford because authorities believe he dumped the girls' bodies there, on a remote mountain where his family owned land. The mountain has been the subject of several searches. However since the bodies of the sisters were never recovered, prosecutors may have had a difficult time getting a jury conviction and thus more open to a plea deal.

The Post reported that the plea agreement also would resolve two unrelated sexual assault cases in Prince William County in northern Virginia. In 2016, Welch was indicted there in the rape of a 6-year-old girl in 1996. Earlier this year, he was indicted for allegedly sexually abusing another girl about the same time.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-susp...ad-guilty/