This story first aired on March 9, 2013. It was updated on June 3, 2017]December 3, 1957. It was the day that changed Kathy [Sigman] Chapman's life forever.
Chapman was just 8 years old that December and like nearly every child in Sycamore, Ill., she couldn't wait for the first snowfall. Chuck Ridulph, then 11 years old, remembers his little sister, 7-year-old Maria, rushing out to play with Kathy around 6 p.m., just as flurries and the dark night settled over the idyllic Midwestern town.
"Today, I'm sure a lot of parents ... are sayin', 'How could that young girl have been out after dark on that corner?' Well, this was a norm," Chuck Ridulph explained.
Maria Ridulph, left and her friend, Kathy Chapman
No one ever locked doors in Sycamore or thought twice about letting little girls out to play a game they called "duck the cars."
"We would go around the pole until a car would come up the street and then ... you had to ... get behind [a] tree before the car lights hit you," Chapman said, smiling at the memory.
Retired Sycamore Police Lieutenant Patrick Solar has studied the cold case extensively.
"The unknown subject would've approached from ...south on ... Center Cross Street. Probably had a vehicle parked on the road. He may have gone by and seen the girls playing," said Solar.
"Had you ever seen him?" Moriarty asked Kathy.
"I had ... never see him before," she replied. "Not at all."
"And were you nervous at all with someone walking up towards you?"
"No ... we didn't even think twice about it," Chapman explained. "He stopped to talk to us ... told us that his name, his name was Johnny. ... Maria took the piggyback ride and he went maybe 20 feet away with her and then ... came back, and asked if we liked dolls. ... And Maria went home to get a doll.
"She went home and brought her doll back. And I said I was gonna go home and get my mittens. I was cold," Chapman continued. "I left both of them standing there on the corner ... and when I got back they were gone. ...No sign of her doll, no sign of her, no sign of anybody."
"Kathy came to the door and asked if Maria was there. I didn't think anything of it. I just said, 'No, she's still outside,'" Chuck Ridulph recalled. "It was a few minutes later -- she came back. 'I can't find Maria.'"
48 Hours Segment Extras Were piggyback rides the pattern of Maria Ridulph's killer?