The kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph was the oldest cold open case to reach the courts in the history of the United States.
Starting point:
On December 3rd 1957, 7 year old, Maria Ridulph was abducted from Sycamore, Illinois. After dinner Maria was playing in the snow with her friend Kathy Sigman when a young man who called himself “Johnny” approached the girlies and offer them a piggyback ride. A few minutes later, Kathy went to her house to fetch her gloves because is was freezing outside but when she came back Johnny and Maria were nowhere to be seen.
Looking for Maria:
Kathy went to the Ridulph’s house to tell everybody what had happened. Chuck, Maria’s older brother went outside to look for the girly but there was not any signal. Rapidly, the men ran to the house of Ralph and Eileen Tessier (two blocks from the Ridulph). Ralph had a hardware store and the idea was to carry on with the search asking the owner to collaborate with flashlights.
Police investigation:
The following days, the police questioned Eileen Tessier about the events of December 3. John stepsisters heard how his mother told the police something they knew it was not true: that John had been home all night.
In addition, there were conflicting reports about the exact time of the disappearance of Maria. The Sycamore police chief told FBI agents that Kathy and Maria had gone out to play at 18:02, but the county sheriff said Maria had not called Kathy until 18:30. Maria's mother later changed his statement and said the girls could have gone outside even at 17:50.
Kathy Sigman spent hours watching carefully the pictures of people on file by the police, but could not find Johnny.
The local police was sure no one in Sycamore could have done such a thing. It had to be an action done by a trucker or someone passing by. The FBI was not so sure. There were several potential suspects in the village. Police questioned all "known sexual deviants". They investigated a voyeur and followed clues that led up to two men nicknamed "Commando" and "Mr. X”.
Maria’s body is found:
Five months later Maria's body appeared, 190 kilometers from her home. A man found his skeleton under a fallen tree on a farm. The cause of death couldn’t be determined.
John Tessier/ Jack Mccullough
The FBI initially showed interest in Tessier as a suspect, a boy from the neighbourhood nicknamed “Commando”. Three days after Maria disappeared, an anonymous woman warned that a young man named "Teschner" who lived in the neighborhood matched with the description of the suspect. A pair of FBI agents showed up at the Tessier house.
Tessier told them then, and continues stating today, he was in Rockford, Illinois, about 65 kilometers northwest of Sycamore, when they kidnapped Maria. His parents supported his story, and was verified by an irrefutable fact: someone who gave his name made a call from Rockford to the Tessier’s house at 18:57, on 3 December 1957.
There was much discussion about the time of the disappearance of Maria. If the kidnap was done around 19:00, then Tessier had an armored alibi. But if they did around 18:15, then something not locked. John could have gone to Rockford Sycamore car and having arrived at 19:00 before disposing Maria’s body.
No one disputes that John traveled to Chicago for a physical test at the military recruiting center. Tessier said he was walking around Chicago the afternoon of December 3, stood in a cabaret show and then went to Rockford to leave the papers in the recruitment center. Recruiters confirm that they saw by the office between 19:15 and 19:30 that afternoon.
Two days after the FBI interrogated Tessier, he was subjected to the lie detector test. When asked if he had ever had sex with children, Tessier admitted having been involved in "some kind of sex play" with a girl but had occurred several years before. He stated that the episode was over and had no relationship with Maria.
Those details did not raise suspicions at the time. Nor the contradictory versions of his mother when she told the police that his son was home all night and the FBI that was in Rockford that night. Finally, an FBI agent concluded his report by emphasizing: "There will not be other research related to this suspect”
New Investigation:
In January 1994, Eileen Tessier was on the verge of death but she had a secret she didn't want to take to the grave. "Janet!" She called her daughter, according to the statement made to the court itself many years later. Janet ran to her mother's bed. Eileen grabbed her wrist and spoke.
“That girl who disappeared. It was John. You have to tell someone.” Although Janet was a baby when her neighbor of seven years disappeared in 1957, she knew immediately what her mother was confessing, her brother, John kidnapped and killed Maria Ridulph.
It was a decade later when Janet Tessier tried one last time after several denies to tell her testimony. She sent an email to the Police of Illinois: "A seven year old girl named Maria Ridulph disappeared. Her remains were found in early spring of 1958. I think John Tessier, of Sycamore, is responsible for her death. Today he lives around Seattle under the name of Jack McCullough. "
Her urge caught the attention of a boss. He called Janet and she told him how her mother had told her on the deathbed that his brother had kidnapped and killed Maria. "I can not promise anything," said the police chief, "but we will try."
He assigned the case to two men, Larry Kot and Brion Hanley. Kot, 57, was a civilian analyst and worked for the police in Illinois. “I had never heard of the case Ridulph”, but soon he gathered information that cast doubt on the suspect's alibi.
Brian Hanley, 41, made the preliminary work and began by Janet Tessier and her brothers. None had nothing good to say about John, especially Jeanne who was sexually abused at the age of 14 by John.
Crime Chronology:
Tessier said he was in Chicago on Tuesday morning December 3, getting a medical checkup. Kot found that it was true. But he realised that Tessier left the recruitment center at noon. He was later seen in Rockford, almost 150 kilometers from Chicago, about 19:15. But there was no witness to verify his whereabouts between noon and 19:15, which meant he could have easily gone back to Sycamore before appearing in Rockford. Kot examined the account of another witness, the dealer of heating oil. The man knew Kathy Sigman and her family and remembered that the girl had greeted him when he was delivering fuel into a nearby house. He arrived there at 18hrs and was 15 to 20 minutes unloading the oil. When he left, about 18:20, he did not see the girls.
Kot concluded that Maria had been kidnapped before 18:20. If Tessier parked his car in the back entrance, where they found the doll Maria, Rockford could have been addressed directly with the girl in her car. It was a journey of 64 kilometers, and could have come to Rockford in less than an hour.
The call made from Rockford to the house of Tessier, was a key part of John alibi also fit into this new timeline. Phone records showed that the call was made at 18:57 but did not point from which place of Rockford had been realized. Tessier could have called home from a pay phone outside the village.It may be that Tessier's alibi was not as infallible after all.
Arrest:
Hanley took six photos and placed them on the table. Five of them had been removed from Sycamore school yearbook. The photo of John Tessier was a little different. Kathy eliminated several pictures immediately but looked at two: No. 1 and No. 4. He studied for two long minutes. "He is," she finally said, noting the number 4. I had no doubt. Now the detectives had a real suspect. It was time to visit to "Johnny".
Seattle two policemen who had joined the case learned that the "person in question" worked in a block of apartments for elderly people. He called himself Jack McCullough because he had changed the name in the early 90's when he married his fourth wife, Sue, for nearly two decades.
He was a former policeman. The agents examined his file and discovered a lurid past. They learned that he had been dismissed from the police after being accused of abusing a child under 15 years who had run away from home. They also found out about the photo of her 11 year old daughter naked hidden in the bottom of a drawer. Police arrest McCullough on June 29, 2011. Jack McCullough returned to Sycamore handcuffed on July 27, 2011, the same day authorities exhumed the body of Maria Ridulph.
McCullough would face trial for rape before facing trial for the murder of Maria.
Judge Robbin Stuckert raised many doubts after people tell their testimonies which were related to John’s dirty and obscure attitudes. He wondered why the applicant had waited decades to publicize the crime. But the verbal war between Stuckert and Campbell led the judge to withdraw from the murder trial. The case was referred to Judge James C. Hallock.
During the trial, in September 2012, the statement Kathy Sigman on stage was decisive when retold how a stranger who called himself Johnny offered them a piggyback ride, and how Maria and Johnny disappeared when she went home to find her mittens.
Kathy stood firm when she was shown the six pictures of the suspects she had already seen in 2010. Janet Tessier testified about the statement of her mother on her deathbed.
Then three prison informers confirmed that in a conversation with McCullough, he had admitted that he had killed Maria. The trial lasted four days. No McCullough took the stand, so he could not present his alibi. The judge issued the verdict. Guilty on all counts: murder, kidnapping and abduction of a child. And Johnny went to prison.
Jack McCullough, 76, was serving a life sentence for the 1957 murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph. Judge William Brady threw out the conviction after a prosecutor found "clear and convincing evidence" that McCullough was wrongly found guilty.
McCullough's lawyers and DeKalb County state's attorney Richard Schmack argued that McCullough's conviction was based on false testimony, improper legal rulings controlling the evidence presented, and a timeline that was tweaked some 50 years after the fact to rule out McCullough's alibi.
McCullough has long insisted that he couldn't possibly have abducted and killed the child because he was 40 miles away in Rockford, Illinois, talking to recruiters and trying to enlist in the U.S. Air Force when she was taken. The prisoner was set free
