72-Year-Old Former Police Officer Found Guilty Of Murder Of 7-Year-Old Girl, 55 Years After Crime
Sept. 14 2012, Published 10:00 a.m. ET
By Breaking Celebrity News Staff
Former police officer, 72-year-old Jack McCullough, who had been charged with the 1957 kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph was found guilty on all counts in an Illinois courtroom Friday, bringing to close one of the oldest unsolved murder cases in U.S. history, Breaking Celebrity News is reporting.
On a cold December night in 1957, in Sycamore, Illinois 60 miles outside of Chicago, two little girls, Maria Ridulph and her friend Kathy Chapman, who would, years later, become a star witness for the prosecution, were playing outside when they were approached by a young man who called himself “Johnny.”
“Johnny” asked the girls if they wanted piggy back rides. The girls obliged. Kathy went to get her mittens, only to return to find that both the young man and her friend were gone.
McCullough was 17 at the time of the disappearance and went by the name of John Tessier. He had been on an initial short list of suspects originally alibi’ed out, claiming that the day the girl disappeared, he had been on a train to Chicago, where he was to get a physical before joining the Air Force.
The longer Maria was missing, the more attention the case gained, ultimately even catching the eye of President Eisenhower and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who demanded daily updates on the investigation.
Then in 1958, the remains of a young girl were found near Galena in Jo Davies County. It was Maria.
Shortly there after, the case went cold, John Tessier changed his name to Jack McCullough and joined the army, ultimately landing a job as a police officer in Washington where he remained until 2011.
His world began to cave in around him after an old girlfriend came forward with an unused train ticket from the train that McCullough was supposed to have been on the day that Maria disappeared.
McCullough was promptly arrested at a nursing home where he worked as a security guard and was charged with kidnapping and murder