Lloyd Welch, Jr.

MANASSAS, Va. (AP) _  A convicted sex offender who was sentenced last week to 48 years in in the 1975 killings of two young Maryland sisters has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two other girls in northern Virginia in 1996. Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. entered his guilty pleas Thursday in Prince William Circuit Court as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors to resolve the 1996 cases as well as the 1975 slayings of 10-year-old Katherine and 12-year-old Sheila Lyon. In court Thursday, both victims in the 1996 assaults told Welch the attacks traumatized them. One victim told him she became “destructive and self-hating,” but eventually turned her life around. She told Welch: “Checkmate, I win!”  Welch apologized before he was sentenced to 12 years.