Second: Clearly this was an impulse crime – the criminal surely wasn't planning on two kids being outside, alone, after dark. So the prosecution’s case is that this 18yr old kid – later in life described as ‘consistent in screwing up’ – on impulse, kidnaps Maria, then stabs her – nobody heard a scream, so why did he have to kill her? Where was the knife? Seems unlikely he’d be walking around with a knife while giving the girls piggyback rides. So, impulse – grabs Maria, maybe wants to have sexy time with her – then suddenly decides to kill her? Not just hit her to shut her up, no – he stabs her in the chest and throat – that would have been a pretty bloody kill. He then morphs into a criminal mastermind. He hides the body, the knife, and his clothes – they almost certainly would have had blood on them, including from when he was picking up the body to hide it – and hides everything where nobody finds a damn thing, despite an intense search that started as early as shortly after 8pm. Oh, but he randomly forgets about the doll, which is found outside the garage near the corner where they were playing.
Anyway - just when is this 18yr old kid supposed to have found a way – and found the time – to go retrieve the body, then drive 240-odd miles round trip to hide the body in Galena? That’s what, a 5 hour trip at least if you know exactly where you’re going and know exactly how to get back – and the location of the body is a very rural area; it’s not like they had GPS back then. Cars entering and leaving Sycamore were searched. Pretty tough to get out of town with a body in the trunk when they’re searching cars.
We know that he was in the military recruiting station in Rockford at 7:15pm on the night of the kidnapping. Actually, someone giving the name ‘John Tessier’ placed a collect call…from Rockford – to the Tessier home at 6:57pm – if this was ‘Johnny’, we have to put him Rockford 15 minutes earlier. But let’s go with the 7:15pm timeline for a minute.
Rockford was 90 minutes by train, an hour by car. If he took the train, clearly there’s no way he can commit the crime – he would have left Sycamore by 5:45pm.
If he drove? Well - it seems rather illogical to expect max driving speeds – it was dark and snowing, remember? But let’s give the prosecution every benefit of a doubt, and assume that it took only exactly 45 minutes for him to drive to Rockford, park, and get to the recruiting officeby 7:15. He has to leave Sycamore by 6:30pm.
According to the prosecution’s timeline, Tom Braddy, the oil delivery guy, sees the Maria and Kathy at 6:05pm, nobody else around. Maria’s mother says she saw Maria and Kathy at 6:05pm in front of their house when she is in the car and pulls out of the driveway. She also sees Tom Braddy’s truck. She sees the girls playing on the corner when she returns – how long was she gone? 5-10 minutes? Tom Braddy says he didn’t see the girls at ‘6:20pm’ as he left. A bus driver passing by around 6:30pm says he didn’t see anybody.
This seems to suggest that the kidnapping happened between the time Maria’s mother got home, say 6:15pm, and 6:20pm, when Tom Braddy says he didn’t see the kids.
But that means that Johnny has to come up, talk to them, ('he's 24, not married'), take turns giving them piggy-back rides, Maria runs home to get her doll, run back, then Kathy runs back home, and runs back, Maria and Johnny gone – all in the span of 5 minutes, and Tom Braddy never sees any of this. No Johnny, no piggyback rides, nothing.
Incidentally, as near as I can find out, Kathy never says anything about seeing Tom Braddy’s truck. Also incidentally, Kathy told investigators that before running back to her house to get the mittens, she asked Johnny what time it was, and he said ‘7pm’. Criminal mastermind! He knows to lie about the time even before he’s committed the crime!
Anyway – it’s 6:20 and now Jack has just 10 minutes to run somewhere with Maria, kill her, hide the body, hide the bloody clothes, hide the knife (where was he keeping a knife??), all without being seen by Tom Braddy or the bus driver, remember. And after this 18yr old kid had killed someone by stabbing them in the chest and throat – this would have been a very bloody kill – and somehow manages to hide all the evidence so well that nobody finds a damn thing, no blood on him or his clothes, at 6:30pm he….jumps in the car and drives to Rockford for the meeting with the recruiter?
Not ‘jumps in the car and goes to dispose of the body in a river somewhere’. No, he leaves the body where it is – where nobody can find it, yet has to be within a few minutes’ walking distance of the corner where they were playing – or he has the bloody body, knife and clothes in his car, and speeds into the city. And then drives *back* - again, body still where it is, or in his car, and he’s at home all night of December 3rd, as attested to by his sisters.
The recruiters never say anything about ‘Johnny’ showing up in a ‘colorful sweater’. When did he change clothes? What happened to his bloody clothes? Where was the body while he was doing this?
If we assume that the 6:57pm collect call from Rockford by ‘John Tessier’ is John – and really, that’s the most logical conclusion – then the timeline moves up 15 minutes. Now he has to leave Sycamore by 6:15pm…and there’s just not enough time to do all the talking and piggyback riding and going home to get dolls and grabbing & stabbing & hiding etc, all without being seen by either Maria’s mom or Tom Braddy. I mean, we’re not just talking reasonable doubt, we’re talking ‘defies the laws of physics’.
If you want to make the case that the call was not John….then who was it? Again, we have this 18yr old kid, a ‘constant screwup’, yet someone who, at the age of 18, is sharp enough to quickly grab clean clothes from home without being seen by anyone (and those bloody clothes disappear, and nobody, not even his sisters, say that he owned such a 'colorful sweater, seems like a rather odd omission) before going to the recruiting station, and he knows enough to have someone provide him with an alibi by having someone else call collect, to his home, using his name, from Rockford at 6:57pm. Right, because at 18 he was already a mastermind criminal and knew that those 15 minutes were enough to provide an alibi.
But who did he ask to make the call? Who did he know in the area? How did he ask him? They didn't have cellphones back then.
