As Prosecutors Prepare to Try 1957 Child Murder Case, Suspect Learns of Lost Alibi Evidence
Difficulties are great for both prosecutors and the defense in a 1957 child murder case.
Prosecutors charged Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, in the 1957 murder and abduction of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph after McCullough’s former girlfriend found an unused train ticket that helped refute his alibi, the Chicago Tribune reports.
McCullough, known as John Tessier at the time of the murder in Sycamore, Ill., has maintained he was in Chicago for a military medical exam on the day of the child’s disappearance. But the ex-girlfriend recently found the unused train ticket and said Tessier had given it to her.
“This is a very, very cold case,” said DeKalb County State’s Attorney Clay Campbell in a Tuesday press conference covered by the Chicago Tribune, Shaw Suburban Media and the Associated Press. “Certainly in a case that’s this old, there’s going to be challenges.”
Ridulph’s childhood friend, Kathy Sigman, had told authorities a man who called himself “Johnny” had offered them piggyback rides on the day in question. Sigman went inside to get her mittens, and when she returned Johnny and Maria were gone.
McCullough joined the military and later worked for two Seattle-area police departments, the Tribune says. He resigned from one police job amid allegations that he had attended a party with a prostitute. He was charged with the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl, but pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of communication with a minor for immoral purpose.
McCullough told the Tribune that military records would prove his alibi. But a military archivist tells both the Tribune and the Associated Press that those records were destroyed in a 1973 fire.
