A COLD CASE YO-YO: SOLVED AND UNSOLVED - THE PIGGYBACK MURDER
The Oldest “Solved”
Cold Case and How It Went Unsolved Again: Maria Ridulph
It was December 3rd 1957 when seven-year-old
Maria Ridulph went missing on a street corner in Sycamore, Illinois and five months
later Maria’s remains were found 100 miles from Sycamore in Woodbine, Illinois.
It wouldn’t be until more than 50 years later that the case had what was
initially thought of as closure – this turned out to be false closure.
The case was seemingly solved in September 2012 when the
police would convict a murderer for the abduction and murder of Maria. This
would then be overturned in March 2016 and Maria’s neighbour Jack McCullough
would be declared an innocent man in April 2017.
To date the murder remains unsolved and the mystery of Maria
Ridulph continues to baffle the Chicago area…
It will more than likely forever be a cold case.
A Piggyback Ride
Seven-year old Maria Ridulph was playing with best-friend
Kathy on the first snowfall of the year; when a mysterious man offered Maria a
piggyback ride…
Maria’s friend Kathy was the last to see Maria Ridulph alive
and the last she saw of Maria was a strange man hoisting her on his back and trotting
off down the street. Kathy had gone inside to get some gloves to fight against
the harsh cold and when she came back outside on the street, both the man and
Maria were gone.
Kathy afterwards went to the Ridulph house to tell them that
Maria was missing. Initially the family thought that Maria was hiding and sent
Maria’s older brother Charles out to search for her.
It was an hour later that the Ridulph family realised that
something was up, and the police were notified beginning a police search and
the FBI being called in. Soon, it seemed like the whole of Illinois was
searching for the missing seven-year old.
And while Kathy was elated some 54 years later at the news
that the man was finally apprehended, she must now continue with the inner
torment that she watched someone in plain sight “take away my best friend”. At the time of the abduction the sun was setting,
and it was near dark as the two girls were playing “duck the cars.” Investigators
pin this time down as around 6.30 pm.
“JOHNNY”
The man was called “Johnny” (or so he told the little girls).
According to Kathy; “Johnny” was 24 and not married. Kathy
stated that “Johnny” had blonde hair, bad teeth and a high-pitched voice.

Going back to a time before Amber alerts and faces on the
back of milk carts, the search for Maria had even caught the attention of FBI
Chief J Edgar Hoover, USA President Eisenhower and garnered national media
attention – somewhat unprecedented in those days for a missing child (at least
in comparison to today). There were various public appeals from the Ridulph
family and widespread investigations across Illinois which including all known
sex offenders, transients and another man that had previously offered piggyback
rides to children.
Maria was later found by mushroom-picking tourists almost
half a year after that fateful piggyback ride; Maria was found wearing a shirt,
undershirt and socks. At this point Maria was decomposed and skeletal. Maria had
to be identified by her parents because of her familiar brown-socks.
It was not until 50 years later that an autopsy could determine
the cause of death as being that of Maria being stabbed in the throat various
times.
John Tessier was at the top of the suspect list from the
very beginning of Maria’s disappearance.
A neighbour of the Ridulph family, and one of seven
children, John was considered an outsider and had been described as “creepy” by
the community. In 1957 Tessier passed a lie detector test and the file was closed
with the report noting: “No further investigation is being conducted regarding
the above suspect.”
At the time the police did not have a schoolbook photograph
and therefore Kathy was not asked to identify John Tessier.
That’s The Man
John was born in Northern Ireland in 1939 to a British
sergeant – John moved to the USA at the age of seven and grew up in Illinois.
Between the Maria case, John lived a fairly quiet life. Serving in the military
for thirteen years where he rose to the rank of captain, he was also a police
officer and worked in security. It was in 1982 where John first fell afoul of
the law when he was charged with statutory rape which was later down graded
into a misdemeanour.
In 1994 John Tessier changed his name to Jack McCullough.
Apparently a tribute to his deceased mother.

The case was actually re-opened as a result of John’s own
mother who believed John to be guilty. Eileen
Tessier said in 1994, while on her deathbed, that John had killed a number of
little girls and asked John’s half sister Janet to tell someone. Another of
John’s sisters Mary confirmed that she had heard her mother say: “He did
it”.
John however had a fragmented and broken relationship with
his mother, which includes incidents of threatening and violent behaviour from
the mother and John had chosen not to attend her funeral when she died. There
is every possibility that the “confession” was made by John’s mother out of
either spite or in a drug-induced delirium.
Janet in the meantime had made multiple attempts to get law
enforcement to investigate her own half-brother, constantly contacting state
police to look into John.
It wasn’t until 2008; when Janet sent a lengthy email to the
Illinois State Police did, they decide to re-open the cold case.
State Police reviewed the evidence and found testimony from
neighbours of John’s seemingly erratic and strange behaviour around young girls
(which included giving another young girl a piggyback and refusing to put the
girl back down); which probably did not sit well next to the previous
conviction and rape charges. John is just one of the many “outsiders” targeted
by law enforcement as a perfect suspect. That being said; there were definite
factors that could have had John fingered.
Everything seemed to go against John upon the re-opening of
the case when Kathy personally picked out John from a picture line up and stated:
“that’s the man”.
Despite all of this, John had a strong alibi. John Tessier
was enlisting in the United States Airforce in Rockford, Illinois on the day in
question.
It was confirmed by recruitment officers that they had spoken with John at that time. A collect call was traced in Rockford, Illinois which was 40 miles from the abduction site and an un-used train ticket to Rockford was found in John’s possession.
The timeline recommended by state investigators was one where
Tessier kidnapped Maria and then drove (the unused ticket) to
Rockford in time to make the call at 6.57 pm and meet with the same recruiting
officers at 7.15 pm. Under this timeline it was determined that Maria was
kidnapped at 6.20 pm.
John was called in for questioning with the police. The
interview can be seen here which highlighted some of the discrepancies in John’s
(now Jack) initial story and his seemingly hostile manner.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/jack-mccullough-questioned-about-1957-maria-ridulph-disappearance/#x
Maria’s body was then exhumed but there was no DNA evidence
that could be found on Maria’s remains and nothing to link John using
forensics.
With different inmates testifying that John had discussed killing
Maria to them (with two different accounts of the cause of death – neither similar
to Maria’s actual death) and with the details of John’s alibi withheld during
trial, it seemed that John Tessier was doomed at trial.
John was convicted by a jury for the abduction and murder of
Maria and given a life sentence. He was sentenced at 73 years old; so was set to
die in prison as a guilty man.
APPEAL
Acting for himself John filed a petition against his murder
conviction. This was dismissed as frivolous.
It wasn’t until the new State’s Attorney Richard Schmack reviewed
the evidence extensively that he discovered that for Tessier to kill Maria was
impossible, this included reviewing the collect call and the distance from
Rockford to Sycamore.
In April 2016 the murder charge was dismissed without
prejudice and on 12th April 2017 John Tessier was
officially declared an innocent man and released from prison.

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/08/us/oldest-cold-case/ch2.html
UNSOLVED
The Maria Ridulph murder had gone from unsolved to cold to
solved and back to unsolved. And now we
remain back at unsolved.
And while there was a feeling of tremendous relief for the
likes of Kathy, the last witness to see Maria alive, and the remaining Ridulph
family at the conviction of John, there is a large sense of injustice that John
Tessier was convicted when all evidence seemed to point away from him.
Maria Ridulph’s murder had been the eldest solved cold case
in the USA and is now just that “unsolved.”
Johnny is now living in a retired community centre where he
once worked and is currently in the process of suing law enforcement for the unfair
conviction.
THE OTHER SUSPECT
William Henry Redmond was a ‘carny’ with an ability to make
young girls vanish in his presence. There was numerous stories of girls
seemingly going missing whenever Redmond was around which included a ten-year-old
in Ohio and an eight-year-old in Pennsylvania (and yet no convictions).
A likely sounding suspect; Redmond is now dead, and the
evidence appears entirely circumstantial, with very little to go on against
Redmond except that he looked like Kathy’s description of Johnny and has a
suspicious history around children.
IN POPULAR CULTURE
The case is one of the most famous unsolved murders in American history and has been subject to many depictions in culture which include a CNN web series called “Taken” and a true-crime book released in 2014 by Charles Lachman called Footsteps in the Snow.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/21863619
when CNN was mentioned the became suspect ... CNN has NO credibility ... they are CANCELED
ReplyDeleteCNN is just like any other news outlet.if they were to be found spreading baseless lies they should be fined.
ReplyDeleteThe Rubes hate CNN. Unintelligent trolls!
ReplyDeleteWe used to live in Sycamore.
ReplyDeleteIt's a typical small midwestern town, where life is peaceful and children play safely.
The murder affected the town for a long time.
There are two inaccuracies in this retelling.
John Tessier legally changed his name to Jack Daniel McCullough
and was convicted under that name.
He was convicted as a result of a bench trial– no jury was involved.
When the case was reopened in 2008,
investigators presented a photographic lineup to the witness Kathy Chapman (née Sigman). Contrary to accepted procedure,
McCullough’s photo was conspicuously different from the others.
Based on this, the witness identification is suspect.
The FBI investigated the murder shortly after it happened.
Tessier (McCullough) was questioned and the FBI records show his alibi was ironclad.
During the bench trial, the judge refused to accept the FBI records as evidence–
after more than fifty years, the agents were no longer alive to testify.
Included with the FBI file was the record of the long distance telephone call.
Thanks for you for this. It's actually really interesting.
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