The town was Sycamore, a small city in DeKalb County, Illinois where kids used to play outside without anyone worrying about supervision.
A young girl by the name of Maria Elizabeth Ridulph was playing a game with her best friend Kathy Sigman in the neighborhood. Maria was only seven years old with brown hair and eyes. Her mother Frances Ridulph commented how she was afraid of the dark and a screamer. She was extremely close to her mother.
The day they were playing in the neighborhood, Kathy and Maria were playing a game called "duck the cars." They would run back and forth to not be seen by the headlights of a car. As they were playing, a man aged 24 who by the name of Johnny allegedly walked up to them and asked them a question . The question he asked the girls was do you like piggyback rides and dolls? What an odd question for a stranger to ask these girls.
Maria was the first to get a piggyback ride and enjoyed it. Then, she wanted to show Johnny her doll, so she went to her house to get her favorite doll. Once Maria returned with her doll, 'Kathy had gone back to her house to get her mittens.
Maria was left alone with this man while Kathy had gone back to her house. With Kathy being gone for that short amount of time, Maria had vanished.
Kathy realized Maria had disappeared. Kathy went up and down the street yelling for her but no answer. She then went back to Maria's house and told her mom that she was missing. Maria's mom initially thought that she was hiding from everyone and sent her brother Chuck out to help find Maria.
After Chuck came back without Maria, the family called the police and claimed that she was missing.
FBI was alerted and went right to the crime scene. In 1957, there were no Amber alerts or Milk Cartons, no confessions or DNA to help agents find information on the missing children.
Local police used their bullhorns to alert residents in the area to keep the porch lights on. Roadblocks were set up. All houses were combed through to make sure that Maria wasn't at any local homes.
Maria's family was begging for help in finding their daughter. Frances Ridulph even said, " God forgives mistakes. We would, too."
Within a short distance from the scene, Maria's doll and her brush were found. Agents shipped these items to the FBI lab near Washington DC.
In addition, there were 250 leads and 200 suspects that had been processed. The Chicago supervisor couldn't believe that such a small town had such a big search team and still no suspects.
Agents went home for the holidays.
During the spring of 1958, a body was found about 120 miles from her home on April 26th. According to Wikipedia, two tourists who were mushroom hunting found skeletal remains tucked under a fallen tree on a farm. The body had been so decomposed that the local coroner Jo Furlong didn't have much to work with. However, Maria Ridulph's body had been identified by her dental records and a lock of hair. The autopsy ruled out no foul play.
Maria was laid to rest in a white casket. The church that Maria had attended played her favorite hymn known as Jesus Loves Me at her funeral.
In the meantime, agents started looking at the man who was at the scene. Kathy had remembered what Johnny had looked like. Agents were trying to get her to pick out the murderer from a lineup of men. The problem was that the agents were trying to get her to move toward a different person than the man that she remembered who was at the scene.
The man known as John Tessier was born John Cherry in 1939. The Tessier family lived near the scene of the disappearance of Maria Ridulph.
Tessier became someone in question so the police went there a day after Maria was reported missing. Johnny's parents gave him an alibi and cleared his name that night. Parents also realized that the description of the man at the scene was very comparable to their son, Johnny.
Tessier served in the military for the time being and had been gone for 13 years. According to Wikipedia, Tessier joined the police department in the town of Lacey. After serving as a police officer in that small town, he later joined another Police Department in Washington state. He didn't get along with his boss, so he left there and went to Tacoma. Here, he took in a young underage girl and allegedly performed sexual advances on her. In conclusion, he had been charged with rape. During his plea negotiations, Tessier pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was only sentenced to one year of probation.
He was fired.
After all of this, Tessier allegedly decided to change his name to Jack McCullough.
In the meantime, the Sycamore police closed the 40-year-old case. They had named a man William Henry Redmond as the abductor and killer of Maria Ridulph. He was a former truck driver and died in 1992. The problem with charging a deadman was that it would be hard to charge him. Also, the circumstantial evidence was weak, and the only way to convict him would be to a true confession.
So, even though a suspect was named, the case was never truly closed because Redmond was dead.
After years of this nation's oldest cold case, it was re-opened. According to Tessier's sister Janet, when her mom was on her deathbed, she had made a statement that Johnny had taken Maria and did it.
Maria's body was exhumed to check for DNA since the technology had improved since her death. What they did find was that Maria had been stabbed in the throat and in her sternum.
With all the new evidence that was coming out on Jack McCullough, a new arrest was to be had. McCullough was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph.
The trial started in September 2012 and prosecutors had called a bunch of witnesses. Kathy Sigman was one of the leading witnesses, and she testified knowing she was the only other person who had seen the man who allegedly took Maria. Also, the inmates who were jailed with McCullough testified that he had talked about killing her.
Just a few days after the trial started, McCullough was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph and sentenced to life in prison.
An appeal was attempted in 2015 to uphold his murder conviction but the court declined to overturn the murder conviction.
Then again in 2015, McCullough acted on behalf of himself and filed a petition asking for his murder conviction to be set aside. McCullough's public defender who had represented him in the beginning, had asked the court to reconsider the dismissal.
His case was being reviewed extensively and came back that he could not have murdered Maria. There was evidence that was held out of the trial that was now used to conclude that he was innocent. A new judge dismissed the charges, however; he could be charged again with the murder of Maria.
Maria's brother Chuck made a statement that he would not appeal the ruling.
The whole justice system seems to be a mess. Will Maria Ridulph ever be able to rest in peace? The Reverend Louis I. Going said it best, "this little girl has entered into ever-lasting peace, probably on the night she was taken." He couldn't have summed it up any better.
Written By:
Heidi
heidi@thelantern.news
Sources:
Comments