In small towns and rural areas in the US, children did, and still do, play outside after dark. I grew up in the 50s and it wasn't at all unusual for us to play outside until suppertime and then go out again after supper. Children were much more savvy and comfortable in the outdoors than they are today. The evening Maria Ridulph disappeared, a man delivering gas to a nearby residence saw both girls around 6:30 p.m., so people were still out and about. It wasn't totally dark because there were lights from houses and a couple streetlights in the neighborhood.
yes maybe that is correct especially in small rural towns like this. But still i don't think it was the done thing to let young children play outside by themselves. I have read the FBI reports and interviews of the people back then, and a lot of people even back then didn't think it was right letting young children play outside when it was dark.
here are a few stuff i read from interviews:
*Maria and Kathy went to a friend's house and asked if he would like to play with them but his mother said no as it was getting dark.
*Maria's mother Frances first denied for Maria to play outside when it was dark. Maria then told Kathy that her mother said no she cant play outside, but Kathy told Maria to beg to her mum and she did, Frances then gave in to her little girl wishes but only if she played with her friends and not by herself.
*some neighbors next door were wondering why such young children were playing outside at this time when it was pretty dark outside.
*A neighbor who was driving by going back to her home with a friend, she was showing her home to a friend of her's. This neighbor knew Maria and Kathy, spoke out of her window when she saw Maria and Kathy playing outside by themselves and stopped to ask them if they should be playing outside at this time, in which Maria and Kathy told their neighbor that they had permission from their parents to play outside.
*An older boy in his teen years was walking down his street and spotted Maria and Kathy playing, he knew the two kids and told them it was time for them to go home as it was getting dark.
*the parents of Maria never got along together, Maria's mother was the boss of the family. Anyway when they were worried with stressed searching for their little daughter Maria, when the FBI was staying at their house, the parents had a huge argument with each other blaming each other, the father Michael blamed his wife Frances for letting Maria play outside with no supervision of a adult and the wife blamed her husband for just watching tv and not keeping an eye out of Maria while playing outside and for not contacting the police as soon as she went missing as Frances wanted to do as soon as she heard she was missing instead of waiting like an hour, she could of been found in time if they contacted the police sooner.
So it wasn't really the norm for young children at that age to be playing outside by themselves even back then. I know it was a quite and small town so i guess its fine, but still even back then people thought it wasn't really that good for young children to be playing outside by themselves when it was dark outside. I read all the following from the points i made from interviews that was made the day she was kidnapped. And we certainly know that children should never be playing outside unsupervised especially at night as this stuff does happen.
Maria's case is a classic example of child abduction. It tells us that children can get abducted even in small quite towns just like this and child abductors usually grabs children when its quite and no one is around, there was only two small children outside it was very easy to take one or both away. They don't take children when their are lots of people around like during the day when people are walking down the street, workers, mail person lots of children playing outside. This happened when no one was around, it was pretty dark and was snowing outside, this was the perfect opportunity to kidnap a child. This is nothing new in the world children gets kidnapped by strangers all the time and when ever they get abducted by a stranger its always the case its a quite place where no one is around.
