Murder of Maria Ridulph

[1][2] Maria was last seen by her friend on her neighborhood corner of Center Cross Street and Archie Place with an unknown man in his early twenties who called himself "Johnny".[1][3][4] However, in March 2016, the DeKalb County State's Attorney announced that a post-conviction review of available evidence showed McCullough could not have been present at the place and time of Maria Ridulph's likely abduction.She positively identified Thomas Joseph Rivard, described in FBI documents as a 35-year-old man approximately 5 foot 4 inches tall and 156 lbs., with dark blond wavy (bushy) hair.[14] Maria's disappearance received national news coverage, and both President Dwight D. Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took an interest in the case.[11][15] Law enforcement continued to investigate various suspects in the area, including transients, known sex offenders,[11] and a local man who had given children piggyback rides,[16] but developed no solid leads.[11] On April 26, 1958, near Woodbine, Illinois, two tourists searching for mushrooms in a wooded area along US Route 20 discovered the skeletal remains of a small child, wearing only a shirt, undershirt, and socks, under a partially fallen tree.The body was identified as Maria Ridulph based on dental records, a lock of hair, and the shirts and socks she had been wearing when she disappeared.[11] At the time of Maria Ridulph's disappearance, he was 18 years old and living at home with his parents and siblings while making plans to join the U.S. Air Force.Sources differ on whether the investigation was triggered by a tip from a local resident[23][25] or by John Tessier's own parents seeking to clear their son, who they realized had the same name and general description as "Johnny".Telephone records were later found showing that a collect call was placed from the Rockford post office to the Tessier home at 6:57 p.m. that evening by someone who gave his name as "John Tassier" as written down by the operator.After leaving the service, he moved to Seattle, Washington, where he subsequently graduated from the King County Law Enforcement Academy in June 1974 and became a police officer in the small town of Lacey near Olympia.[23] On April 27, 1994, John Tessier legally changed his name to Jack Daniel McCullough, saying that he wanted to honor his late mother.[12][29][30] Redmond had been charged in 1988 with the 1951 murder of an 8-year-old Pennsylvania girl,[12] although that case was dismissed when a police officer refused to reveal the name of a confidential informant.[12] Another of McCullough's half-sisters, Mary Pat Tessier Hunt, was also present when Eileen spoke to Janet, but later testified that she had only heard her mother say, "He did it.[38] McCullough, who allegedly had once threatened to kill Janet with a gun and sexually molested his half-sister Jeanne when she was a minor, was estranged from the Tessier family by the time of Eileen's death.[12] Janet Tessier said that she made several fruitless attempts over the next fourteen years to get law enforcement, including the Sycamore police and the FBI, to look into her mother's statement.[12][25] State police investigators reviewed evidence and developed a new timeline under which Tessier could have kidnapped Maria and driven to Rockford in time to make a telephone call at 6:57 p.m. and meet with recruiting officers at 7:15 p.m.[1] At first, McCullough spoke calmly and cooperated, but when faced with questions about the murder of Maria Ridulph and his whereabouts on the night of the crime, he became evasive and aggressive.The lead prosecutor, DeKalb County State's Attorney Clay Campbell, was reluctant to take the case due to its age and the lack of any physical evidence connecting McCullough to the crime.[42] On September 14, 2012, McCullough was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 20 years.According to Schmack, evidence was kept out of the trial that clearly established McCullough's whereabouts on the evening of Maria Ridulph's abduction and supported his alibi.[46] In particular, phone records from Illinois Bell showed that McCullough made a collect call to his mother that evening from a payphone in downtown Rockford rather than from Sycamore as alleged at his trial.Brady postponed ruling on a request by Maria's brother Charles Ridulph, backed by the signatures of hundreds of Sycamore citizens including the city's mayor, that a special prosecutor be appointed to replace Schmack on McCullough's case.[11] A true crime book by Charles Lachman, Footsteps in the Snow (2014), also became the basis for a Lifetime Movie Network documentary of the same name.In contrast, Northern Illinois author Jeffrey Dean Doty self-published a non-fiction book, Piggyback (2014), in which he reviewed evidence and court filings in the case and examined whether McCullough had been wrongfully convicted.