The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation

By Mark Bowden

From the bestselling author of Killing Pablo, a haunting and gripping account of the true-life search for the perpetrator of a hideous crime-the abduction and likely murder of two young girls in 1975-and the skilful work of the cold case team that finally brought their kidnapper to justice.

On March 29, 1975, sisters Kate and Sheila Lyon, aged ten and twelve, disappeared during a trip to a shopping mall in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Three days later, eighteen-year-old Lloyd Welch visited the Montgomery County Police headquarters with a tip: he had seen the Lyon girls at the mall that day and had watched them climb into a strange man's car. Welch's tip led nowhere, and the police dismissed him as a drug-addled troublemaker wasting their time. As the weeks passed, and the police's massive search for the girls came up empty, grief, shock and horror spread out from the Lyon family to overtake the entire region. The trail went cold, the investigation was shelved and hope for justice waned.

Then, in 2013, a detective on the department's cold case squad reopened the Lyon files and eventually discovered that the officers had missed something big about Lloyd Welch in 1975.

In 1975, at age 23, Mark Bowden was a rookie reporter for a small Maryland newspaper reporting on the Lyons sisters' disappearance. In The Last Stone, Bowden returns to his first major story, taking us behind the scenes of the cold case team's exceptional interrogation of Lloyd Welch, the man who - nearly forty years after the crime - quickly became the most likely suspect in the Lyon case. Based on extensive interviews and video footage from inside the interrogation room, The Last Stone is a thrilling and revelatory reconstruction of a masterful investigation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press UK
• Release date: May 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781611859140

Mark Bowden

Mark Bowden is the author of Road Work, Finders Keepers, Killing Pablo, Black Hawk Down (nominated for a National Book Award), Bringing the Heat, and Doctor Dealer. He reported at The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He lives in the Philadelphia area.

Reviews for The Last Stone

[puddintame-358807 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am reminded of the comment of a friend who was a parole officer in Prince Georges County, Maryland, where some of the suspects lived: "I don't know how to feel about my clients; they are simultaneously so pathetic and so vicious."This isn't a particularly exciting read, but I think that is very educational, and both heartening and disheartening. I am moved by the dedication of the detectives, sifting the tedious lies in an attempt to solve the case. Disheartening, in that for all their labor, they cannot really get to the whole truth of this horrific 40-year-old cold case. They are left knowing that very likely Lloyd Welch, who was convicted, didn't act alone, and while they have strong suspicions about his accomplices, they can't prove their involvement.

[soraxtm-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

since they never found the bodies the whole thing is kinda untenable. the investigators come off as jerks.

[mrdickie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was interested in this book because some of the events took place in Montgomery county and some in Prince Georges county, Maryland.

[loraineo_8 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Two pre teen sisters disappeared from a shopping mall in1975. This became a cold case until almost 40 years later, very dedicated detectives spent a year interviewing a man in prison for child molestation and were eventually able to get a confession. Well written .

[reviewsbykay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’m a lover of true crime. Borderline obsessed with trying to solve the cases before the detectives. This was a long, drawn out and confusing case. Nothing makes sense. At times it was very hard to continue reading this book due to the monotonous and every changing timeline. Crimes that involve kids always get to me. This story is no different. If you expect resolution. You won’t get it with this story. You’ll end up with more questions that you started with.

[shannonrose4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm a big fan of Law & Order, so I was intrigued by the case documented in great deal here. What happened and who really made the two sisters disappear? At times, I wanted to have this case all wrapped up like they do on my favorite show; but as I read what the detectives went through to pull the truth out of someone who made a living of lying to everyone, (including himself) I gained a new perspective on what it really takes to solve a crime.

[techeditor_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

THE LAST STONE is a difficult book to read for more reasons than one. Mostly it’s the subject matter.Two little girls, 12 and 10, go missing in 1975. In 2018 Lloyd Welch is finally convicted of their murders. It is what happened to those little girls, which Lloyd tells us over and over again, that is a horror to picture as we read.Mark Bowden structures the majority of THE LAST STONE with actual transcripts of Welch's interviews with police over nearly 2 years. They are repetitive, tedious. And for all that, the whole truth is never learned, just enough to convict him.In the end, police can only theorize about what actually happened. So that is how Bowden concludes his book, with the various theories. They are all heartbreaking.

[jwrudn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two barely teenag girls, 12 and 10 disappeared from a mall near Washington, DC in 1975. No one knew what happened to them and their bodies were not found. 38 years later a cold case squad stumbled upon a clue. The clue led to a suspect. Even though he was already in jail and had new reason to cooperate, two years of interrogation managed to piece together enough of the crime to convict him of murder although much of what happened was still unclear. The Last Stone is a fasinating story of a masterpiece of criminal investigation that is ultimately horrifying, even nauseating.

[bnbookgirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating look at a group of determined detectives who are trying to solve a cold case. They are trying to get a compulsive liar, who is currently in prison, to admit to the crime they all know he committed. This process takes years, but they finally convict him. Such a sad fate for the two young victims.

[martinhughharvey_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is certainly one of the better books I've ever read however, I'm not celebrating that fact and quite unsure how to express my feelings. In 1975 two young sisters went missing from a Virginia mall and this story focuses mainly on the investigations 40+ years later and the final conviction. However, no bodies or evidence of the two girls was even found. I am convinced that the man found, and who plead guilty, was involved but did he actually murder and dispose of the two bodies I, like the key detectives, am not sure.The author was a cub reporter when the disappearance first occurred and I guess, gets the write the last word. The cold case was assigned to a detective not to far from retirement, apparently quite common, who spent several years getting nowhere and also becoming increasingly despondent at his ineffectiveness until suddenly and out of the blue old evidence appeared, likely had been there all the time, which was a small lead. Other detectives were assigned who essentially dismissed the lead and person of interest but found someone else. Already a convict and convicted of a crime of sexual abuse he would have been 18 at the time of the disappearance.The remainder of the story is the process of the key detectives, 2 or 3 but mainly one, and their interviews of the suspect in prison. The words are those from recordings and amazing how the lying and manipulative suspect, and the cops, work at their task. Fascinating seems inadequate. The cops got their guy who did plead guilty but so much was unsolved. Guilty of one one of the sisters and no evidence of them of any evidence found. Each of the three detectives have different, and unsatisfied, views of the result. I guess they did what they could and certainly they were scarred by they experience.One take away is it certainly gave me respect for the key detectives in this. Just them and not their departments though.Central to this plot is that the prime person of interest and eventual guilty man, and his extended family or clan, were Appalachian "hill billies" and after reading this story, and remember this is non-fiction, I can only imagine what a Stephen King story might have been like - the "Clampetts" meet the unimaginable. The parents comment at the trial - “I’m tired. I just want to go home”. Christ almighty …I need some fresh air and now to read some mindless book however, lurid it might be I know is fiction.

[niaomiya · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a gripping account of the recent cold case investigation of the 1975 disappearance of sisters Sheila and Katherine Lyon, 12 and 10 years old, respectively. With access to recorded interview transcripts, author and reporter Mark Bowden lets the reader into the inner workings of the cold case investigative team and the mind of a disturbed criminal. This book is not so much the solving of a decades-old mystery as it is insight into police interrogation techniques. The reader is right along with the cops in feeling the mind-numbing frustration of trying to get the truth out of a suspect who lies so much that it's hard to tell which parts have kernels of truth and which parts are concocted stories. The resolution is realistic if not entirely satisfying: sometimes with cold cases you never find out the full story, but it may be enough to see justice doled out, if only in part.

[madamepince · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

If you're interested in the nuts and bolts of suspect interrogation, this book is for you. But you simply want to know what happened to the missing girls, you may become frustrated.

[schatzi_5 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

My rating is entirely for how the book is written, and is in no way reflective of the incredible amount of police work that it took to bring two little girls' murderer to justice. I have nothing but respect for those who worked on the case and managed to bring at least a little peace to the Lyon family.This book is boring as hell. If you enjoy reading interview transcripts for hours, especially ones that are repetitive to the point of nearly bringing you to tears, I would highly recommend this book to you. Otherwise, I'd recommend skipping it. The "author" of the story does very little here, except add a little explanation here or there and summarizes a bit. The vast majority of this book is verbatim interview transcripts. Lloyd Welch is a liar and stumbles over himself and his story multiple times, and it was incredibly dull to read him tweak his story just a little bit every time to try to weasel out of trouble.Great work to the police officers who refused to give up until they brought a measure of justice to Sheila and Kate, but a huge "meh" for this book.

[1randal-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am a big fan of the author's work. Bowden has written great books in the past that I loved, including Black Hawk Down, Doctor Dealer, and Killing Pablo. His propensity for digging into a project until it has been fully examined, plus his great writing ability is phenomenal. Unfortunately, I do not feel that this is one of his better books. This is the story of the kidnapping of two young girls from a Maryland mall in 1975. At the time of the event, the case remained unsolved. It was one of Bowden's earliest assignments as a reporter. Many years later, a cold case detective team discovered a lead which had been missed. They followed the clues to a man who claims to have witnessed the abduction. The detectives found the man, Lloyd Welch, incarcerated. What followed was two years of interviews/interrogations of Welch, in which his story changed almost daily. The man was such a habitual liar that no one could ever discern the truth from him. Should have been an interesting read, but in actuality it was quite tedious. Basically just transcripts of the interviews. We will probably never know the truth of what happened to the two girls, or where their bodies may be. I feel horrible for the family.

[darcia_10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Books that offer a view into a disturbed mind usually fascinate me. While The Last Stone has its moments of intrigue, overall I was disappointed in the content.The author focuses almost solely on the interrogation of Lloyd Welch. The problem with this tactic is the constant repetition. Welch is a pathological liar who plays games with the detectives. During each session, Welch offers a slightly altered version of the story he'd previously told, and so we're reading a lot of the same things, over and over. The only reason it remains even semi-interesting is because the dialogue is lifted verbatim from the interrogations, and so we get an inside glimpse of the conversations between Welch and the detectives. The biggest disappointment for me was that the author made little attempt to give the Lyons girls an identity. They were just two girls, interchangeable with any other two girls. I learned nothing about who they were.The content also doesn't offer us much of a connection with the cops involved in this case. I would have liked to understand what it was like for them to sit through dozens of hours interrogating Lloyd Welch.A word of caution: This book has a lot of graphic detail about sexual deviancy with children. Lloyd Welch and his entire extended family are portrayed in a way I can't even fathom. Sexual abuse and incest were, apparently, the norm with almost all of these people. I don't think we needed the extent of details in all the situations described.Overall, this book is notable for the insight into police interrogations, but it lacks insight into the broader aspects.*I received an advance copy from the publisher.*