IL IL - Maria Ridulph, 7, Sycamore, 3 Dec 1957

[JoeFromLB]

He's appealing. No surprise there.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/crime/article/Man-convicted-in-1957-Illinois-death-appeals-5421120.php

 

[al66pine]

Dr. Phil show Oct. 22 w. family members of McCollough's and others.

10/22 Footsteps in the Snow: The Cold Case Murder of Maria Ridulph

• 

On Dec. 3, 1957, 7-year-old Maria Ridulph disappeared near her Illinois home, and five months later, her body was found. The case went cold for 55 years, until a mother’s deathbed confession implicated her own son, Jack McCullough -- once known as John Tessier -- who eventually was convicted of the murder, despite maintaining his innocence. Dr. Phil sits down with Maria’s brother, Chuck, and talks to Maria’s friend Kathy -- the last person to see her alive. What happened that fateful night? Plus, hear from McCullough’s sister, Janet, who turned her brother in and testified against him. Why does she say she’s convinced her brother is guilty? And, learn why McCullough’s stepdaughter, Janey, says her stepfather is not a murderer. Could McCullough have been wrongfully convicted?

^ http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/2290/ ^

 

[PastTense]

Lots of photos in this Daily Mail article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...anks-deathbed-confession-murder-s-mother.html

 

[PrimeSuspect]

Footsteps in the Snow is a recent documentary about the case. John Tessier was one of the LE's first suspects, fit the description to a tee, yet he had a alibi for that evening which was verified by his parents but years later debunked by his own mother on her deathbed. Now as McCullough, the way he speaks about Maria just makes me sick!

BTW, there is no mention of abuse by the hands of the father, Mr Tessier though. He isn't discussed at all, only to mention that he was not McCullough's natural father.

 

[Gunther Toody]

I have doubts that McCollough actually committed the crime. Unfortunately, with crimes of this magnitude and the publicity associated with them, juries are more swayed by public opinion than examination of the facts. The same is true of the conviction of Ken Hansen in the Peterson/Scheussler murders. The evidence against Hansen, just as the evidence against McCollough was very flimsy and all circumstantial.

Another troubling aspect to these highly emotional cases is that the accused has already been convicted in the court of public opinion and it is incumbent upon him to prove his innocence, which is the antithesis to the basic fundamentals of the American justice system which contends that all are innocent until proven guilty..

 

[youngsters]

Maria's doll, when she went missing the whole neighbourhood was searching for the missing little girl. I read that they searched for hours and found nothing, and then out of nowhere a doll was found in a neighbours front yard. This was Maria's doll (a small old rag doll with the pretty blue dress) the one she took out to play and show Johnny so she could get another piggyback ride. Why did it suddenly just appear out of nowhere when everyone searched everywhere and couldn't find anything during the first searched and then her doll appear on the second search. I believe their was a 2nd person involved there must be, or her killer was among the searches, but Jack's friends told the police he wasn't with them of the search on the night of her kiddnapping. So there must be a 2nd person involved. Was Jack really alone when he kiddnapped little Maria? or was it really Jack who kiddnapped Maria. A pedophile is interested in little girls, Jack seemed like a pervert who was interested in teen/adolescent girls, but not very young children like Maria's age. But then again maybe Jack did like young little girls and keeped it a secret.

Another thing a 7-year old and 8-year old little girls should not have been out playing by themshelves at night unsupervised by adults.... period... I think Maria was kidnapped closer to 6pm than 7pm, as by 7pm a 7-year old and 8-year old child would be heading for bedtime, i read somewhere her mum (who must have been in a very stress and worried when being interviewed) must have said the wrong time and admits it was closer to around 6pm-6:30pm.

I will be uploading some real press photos of the case that I brought of a company who sells original press photos. These are really old and dated from 1957-1958, one includes a photo of a investigator holding Maria's doll. I will need to scan them and upload them on here.

I mean it's a horrible thing to murder a innocent young child, she was only 7 still a baby. Seeing photos and her family describing her she seems like a lovely and beautiful little girl, a very pretty little girl. My blessings for the Ridulph family and best friend Kathy. RIP little Maria.

little Maria Ridulph on vacation with family in the summer of 1957. Found it on google images. What a sweet little angel.

 

[youngsters]

Book
http://www.footstepsinthesnowbook.com/

LMN documentary

http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/footsteps-in-the-snow

 

[youngsters]

Press Photos of the Maria Ridulph case...

I brought these press photos from a company.



Photo 1: "Mayor Harold Johnson (right) and assistant Police Chief Richard Mattis of Sycamore search a trunk of one of the hundreds of cars stopped in police road block at Sycamore during search for missing Maria Ridulph, 7. Police have learned that Maria at times hid in the trunk of her father's car. Dec 11 1957."


Photo 2: . Iowa where little Maria's body was found in April 26th 1958.


Photo 3: "Police Magistrate Arthur Ayars holds doll Maria was playing with just before she disappeared Tuesday evening. Doll was found abandoned near garage." Dec 5 - 1957


Photo 4: "Mrs. Frances Ridolph, is comforted by her other children as the family keeps a vigil in their Sycamore home for missing Maria, 7, who disappeared Tuesday. The other children are Pat, 16; Kay 15, and Charles, 11. A house-to house search for the missing girl was taking place in Sycamore today." Dec 6 - 1957


Photo 5: Press Photo, Jacket found. 1957.


Photo 6: "Michael Ridulph, Maria's father, stands anxiously on shore of lake, next to pump, with prayer in his heart that nothing will be found.

April 23 -1958"


Photo 7: "The Scene in Sycamore, ILL, 65 miles west of Chicago, where Maria Ridolph (inset), 7, disappeared about 7 p.m. Tuesday. No. 1 indicates spot where Maria and a playmate, Kathie Sigman, were playing when a young man, known only as "Johnny", offered Maria a piggyback ride. Kathie, who was cold, went home to get her mittens so she could go piggyback riding, too-but when she got back "Johnny" and Maria were gone. No. 2 indicates Maria's home." Dec 4 - 1957

 

[PrimeSuspect]

I have doubts that McCollough actually committed the crime. Unfortunately, with crimes of this magnitude and the publicity associated with them, juries are more swayed by public opinion than examination of the facts. The same is true of the conviction of Ken Hansen in the Peterson/Scheussler murders. The evidence against Hansen, just as the evidence against McCollough was very flimsy and all circumstantial.

Another troubling aspect to these highly emotional cases is that the accused has already been convicted in the court of public opinion and it is incumbent upon him to prove his innocence, which is the antithesis to the basic fundamentals of the American justice system which contends that all are innocent until proven guilty..

I agree about one is innocent till proven guilty, but I don't understand your view about this case being swayed by public opinion. Jack was never harassed or publicly vilified by the media/cops/sleuthers his entire life after Maria's kidnap and murder (over 50 years). He has only come to attention years after his mother's confession and her daughter contacting LE, which took several years before they acted upon it in 2012.

So my questions are - why did his mother confess on her deathbed that she gave her son an alibi and he was responsible for Maria's disappearance? If she didn't, then his sisters have lied, for what reason?

Jack admits he knew Maria and speaks lovingly of her in his interview with police, describing her appearance and even her pretty clothes, right down to her shoes. How many 18 yr olds would remember a little girl they supposedly barely knew 50 years prior? Why does this particular girl hold in his memory?

His present wife and step daughter believe he is innocent, but how can their opinions be of use if they know nothing of his life before they met him. I'm sure Dennis Rader's wife and children thought him innocent too.

JMO

 

[Cubby]

Conviction upheld.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-mccullough-appeal-met-0214-20150213-story.html

 

[DragonAsh]

First-time poster. I’ve been following the case of Maria Ridulph with some interest for the past week or so, and spent an inordinate amount of time the past few days going over it. I was of course at first fascinated, wondering how they could possibly get a conviction so many years after the crime had been committed.

Well – they got the conviction. And I say this will the utmost respect and sympathy for the family of Maria Ridulph - my kids are Maria's age - but I just can’t shake the very ugly taste it leaves in my mouth. Nobody should be brought to trial, let alone convicted, based on the evidence presented at trial (and based on the evidence that -wasn't- allowed to be presented at trial). Not if ‘reasonable doubt’ and ‘rule of law’ means anything in this country. Far too much simply doesn't add up.

This will get a bit long, so I'll split it up into a couple of posts. Hopefully some of you that have been following the case longer than I have can shed some light on what to me seems serious problems with the case.

For starters: at the time, Kathy said that the man who called himself Johnny had ‘long, blond hair that curled in front and flopped onto his forehead’.

This is the picture of Johnny in 1957 – third from the right, the only picture with a black background and the only picture with the guy looking at the camera:

Nothing in this picture suggests ‘long blond hair’ with a curl so long it ‘flops onto his forehead’. If that’s the memory of Johnny she had ‘seared into her memory’, there’s no way looking at that picture should have looked familiar to her.

 

[DragonAsh]

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.

 

[DragonAsh]

Finally – the main evidence that was used to convict him was Kathy’s eyewitness testimony, who says she ‘remembered his face’ after seeing a picture, 55 years after the case.

Now – I’m sure I don’t need to go over how horribly inaccurate eyewitness testimony tends to be. It’s sketchy in the absolute best of conditions. It’s worse than sketchy when just a little time goes by. Now think about 50+ years of time elapsing.

Now, this was 1957 – a simpler time, right? A small town, where people didn’t lock their doors, because ‘everybody knows everybody’. Kids were outside all the time, because they didn’t have cable TV or internet or PlayStations and such.

I find it exceedingly odd that neither Maria nor Kathy recognized Johnny as the neighborhood kid LIVING TWO BLOCKS AWAY. If it was Johnny that lived two blocks away, why would he tell them he’s ’24 and not married’? He’d expect them to know him from the neighborhood, because he lived TWO BLOCKS AWAY.

You could also easily make the case that 55 years later, Kathy vaguely remembers the face in the photograph because…, it was the guy that lived TWO BLOCKS AWAY her entire childhood.

Finally, the idea that Kathy could remember Johnny’s face is beyond ridiculous. First of all…she was 8 years old at the time. I’m not even as old as Kathy is now, and I had some traumatic things happen in my life when I was 7-8, and there’s no way in hell I’d have confidence in remembering anything with accuracy now, let alone being confident enough to send someone to prison.

Secondly, she had zero reason to remember Johnny’s face at the time – she sensed nothing wrong, didn’t think anything was amiss. She ran back home to get some mittens so she could keep playing outside longer with her new friend! It was only after, when they realized Maria was missing, then she might have realized it was important to remember the face – but by that time, any short-term memory bubbles of Johnny would have been long gone, heck they were likely gone even before she had been able to find her mittens.

And just how good of look could she have gotten? Sunset on December 3rd, 1957 was 5:20pm. It’s an hour later before Johnny is on the scene. So we know it's dark, and we know it's cloudy (because it's snowing). We saw above, that 'Johnny' was on the scene for only a few minutes, of which some was spent with Johnny doing piggyback rides (tough to see face) and some was spent with Kathy running to and from her house. A couple of minutes, while playing, on a dark, snowy night. That’s it.

The description she gives – colorful sweater, long blond hair etc – does not match anything like the picture she was shown 55 years later.

I don’t care who you are, anyone that says, with confidence and certainty, that they can be shown a picture and recall a face they haven’t seen in over half a century, is lying, or delusional.

Do I think Kathy is lying on purpose? No. Do I think she very likely had ‘help’ in picking Johnny out of the picture lineup, either subconsciously or otherwise? Yes. Do I think it’s possible she might vaguely remember the face, but only because yeah, he lived two blocks from me my entire childhood? Yes.

He seems to have had some…sex issues as a younger man. Nothing that I've seen suggests violence. Nothing. And yet as an 18yr old he suddenly stabs a little kid? Why did he have a knife in the first place? Nobody heard anyone screaming. If she starts to squirm he just lets her go. This isn't a grown woman that needs to be threatened, this is a little kid.


“He seems kinda skeevy, did some weird things and just ewwwwe, so he must be guilty, I totally don’t have a problem with the conviction being based solely on an eyewitness account that is 55 years old, and based on a photo that doesn’t remotely match the description at the time, with the testimony coming from someone that insists they can remember a face 55 years later, yet *at the time* completely didn’t recognize the face as the kid living two blocks away’

 

[DragonAsh]

Some interesting points.

Maria’s mother, Eileen Tessier, died on January 23, 1994.

In early January, while in the hospital, she calls in Janet to share the big secret she had held for 35 years.

It raises some questions. First of all, how could she know that Jack was guilty? What did she – and only she – see, that none of Jack’s brothers and sisters saw? All the siblings were home that evening. None of them saw anything.

After being told this shocking revelation – that her brother was a killer – Janet was so upset that she…..well, didn’t do much at all. Doesn’t take notes. Doesn’t record it. Doesn’t ask for details. After her mother dies, she makes a phone call or two to the Sycamore police department, then gives up. Does nothing for 10 years. Then writes one more email and is prepared to forget about it.

Janet says her sister Mary was in the room as well. Mary does not back Janet’s version of the story, and had to be prodded to testify, reluctantly, that she thinks her mother said ‘he did it’, without saying who ‘he’ was. Mary was so concerned about her mother’s deathbed confession calling her brother a killer that she….did absolutely nothing at all.

You know your half-brother has been involved in groping or worse your sisters and neighborhood girls. Your mother tells her he was also a killer.

But that’s the extent you go to make sure he’s put behind bars? Really?

Are they lying due to a hatred of their half-brother, oldest in the family and apparently a favorite of his mother? Angry over apparent sexual misconduct when they were younger? Perhaps. Are they fabricating what their mother said? Possibly. Did the mother say it, in a drug-induced haze? Possible - we know she was in the hospital, on drugs, in a difficult state on her deathbed. Why doesn’t Mary recall the incident like Janet does?


“Why does this particular girl hold in his memory”

Are you kidding me? Why does he remember her? Uh, you mean besides the minor fact that she was MURDERED TWO BLOCKS FROM HIS HOUSE? Oh, yeah, and he’s been tried and convicted of killing her? How the hell would he not remember her? Although I recall nothing about him saying anything about remembering the clothes she was wearing or the shoes he had on.

Did you know that Kathy was shown a lineup of suspects back in 1957? Picked someone out too, as ‘definitely him’. Turns out the guy she said was the killer had an ironclad alibi. Couldn’t be him.

This was in 1957, when the event was barely a week or so old. Do you think Kathy’s memory of Johnny’s face magically improved over the next half a century? She’s ‘certain’ that the picture she was shown 50+ years later is Johnny….but she was completely wrong once before. Why should we believe her this time?

How ridiculous is it that there was more evidence – and a living witness to directly make the accusation – for the rape trial, which was (rightly) thrown out due to lack of sufficient evidence, than there was for the murder trial. The judge basically based his entire decision on the eyewitness account. It’s almost like they don’t train judges to understand how unbelievably flawed eyewitness testimony is. It’s almost like he just arbitrarily ignored the fact that Kathy had already given eyewitness testimony before, and been wrong.

 

[bessie]

Welcome to Websleuths, DragonAsh. The questions you raise are valid ones, and you're certainly not alone in asking them. I can't say I agree with you 100%, but I do appreciate your well laid out arguments. A pleasure to read.

Let me add, I find it very disturbing that a murder conviction would be based on hearsay and a 50-year-old witness ID, especially when the witness was a young child who caught what amounts to not much more than a few fleeting glimpses of the perp. Her memory might well be correct, but the odds aren't high enough to support a murder conviction in the absence of physical evidence, IMO.

 

[bessie]

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.

According to his original story, the exam in Chicago was finished by noon. He walked around the city for a few hours, and left Chicago on a 5:15 train, which arrived in Rockford at 6:45. From the train station, he went to the Rockford recruiting office to deliver the physician's note, but the office was closed. At 6:57 he placed a call to his home from a pay phone near the post office, to ask his father to pick him up in Rockford, and arrived back in Sycamore about 9:00 p.m.

(Affidavits can be found at http://www.acandyrose.com/maria_ridulph_timeline.htm)

But then there's that unused, government issued, train ticket from Rockford to Chicago submitted to LE in 2010 by his former gf. That's hard to shake. One has to wonder why he gave it to her, and why she hung on to it. Did she understand its importance? I tend to think so, and question why she didn't turn it over years ago. It seems the parents and the gf tried to protect him back then.

There's still the question of the collect phone call from Rockford to the Tessier residence, which was verified by LE. Who would've placed that call if not John? Could it have been a friend he'd planned to meet in Rockford who called when he didn't show up? Maybe that friend was supposed to meet him at the train station to give him a ride to Sycamore.

ETA:

[...]
On the July 27 extradition flight to Chicago, McCullough insisted that detectives pay attention to the travel times, believing that could prove he didn't kill Maria. Seeming excited about the attention he was getting, detectives said McCullough looked for camera crews and said the media would have a field day when they figured out the proper timeline.

[...]
McCullough changed his story about the train and later claimed that after that military physical he met an unidentified man for a ride to Rockford, a town about 40 miles away from where Maria was killed. McCullough claimed to have called his dad from Rockford, and when he couldn't get a ride back he hitchhiked to Sycamore.

But it was snowing that day, Detective Steiger pointed out. Did he really hitchhike?

McCullough claimed he was acclimated to the cold and dressed appropriately.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/arti...lped-solve-nation-s-oldest-4116762.php#page-2

 

[bessie]

As for the sweater, one half-sister testified that he owned a multicolored sweater similar to the one described by the eyewitness, Kathy Sigman. She said his mother made it for him, and that she never saw it again after the murder.

(Tessier's half-sister)
[...]
Katheran Tessier Caulfield, a retired secretary for architectural firm in Virginia, Minn., included half-brother John in her long list of siblings and identified him in the courtroom. She described him in the late 1950s as “tall and gangly, six feet tall, with a wavy-hair doo-wop hairdo on the top.” She said he frequently wore a multicolor sweater knitted by their mother.

[...]
She also said she never saw the multicolored sweater after that day.

(A high school friend)
[...]
He described John Tessier much as his half-sister had, and noted he “wore flannel shirts and a lot of the time sweaters” in the winter, including a multicolored crew-neck sweater.

http://northernpublicradio.org/post/half-sisters-testify-prosecution-trials-second-day

https://jackdmccullough.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/fbi-files-from-cnn.pdf

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/08/us/oldest-cold-case/

 

[bessie]

I edited my previous post because I read something I'd overlooked. Now I understand your argument. If the recruiters are correct, the timeline doesn't seem to work.

[...]
Recruiters verify that he showed up at their office between 7:15 and 7:30 that evening, after they had closed. He talked with at least two recruiters about getting a note from his doctor to address the spot on his lung. One recruiter told the FBI he thought the nervous young man was a "narcotic," a drug addict. The other remembered him as "a lost sheep."

A third recruiter, Staff Sgt. Jon Oswald, met with Tessier the morning of December 4 at the Rockford office. The recruit had a fresh cut on his lip and made small talk, saying it was a good thing that he was not in Sycamore the previous night because of "the disappearance of the girl," Oswald recalled for the FBI.
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/08/us/oldest-cold-case/ch2.

However:

[...]
Kot examined closely the accounts of the most neutral, credible witnesses at the time: A heating oil deliveryman and a city bus driver.

Tom Braddy knew Kathy Sigman and her family, and he recalled that she waved at him as he stopped to deliver oil at the big white house on the corner of Archie Place and Center Cross Street, where the girls were playing. He estimated he got there about 6 p.m. and spent 15 to 20 minutes delivering his load. He noticed the time on a clock at a service station as he headed back to his office: 6:20. He did not see the girls on the corner as he left.

A city bus passed by that corner at 6:30 p.m. The driver said he saw no one there.

Kot concluded that Maria was taken no later than 6:20 p.m. If Tessier parked his car in the back alley where Maria's doll was found, he could have headed straight to Rockford with Maria in his car. It was a 40-mile trip, give or take a few miles, but there would have been little traffic on the back roads in 1957, and he easily could have made it to Rockford in less than an hour.

A collect phone call placed in Rockford to the Tessier home – a key piece of John's alibi — also fit into the new timeline.

Phone records showed the collect call was placed at 6:57 p.m. but they didn't pinpoint where in Rockford the call was made. Tessier could have called home from a pay phone on the outskirts of town.

Maybe, Kot thought, Tessier's alibi wasn't so ironclad after all. Maybe the phone call from Rockford wasn't Tessier asking his stepfather to pick him up at the recruiting station there, as he'd maintained. Maybe the call was made by a nervous Tessier wanting to see if anyone was looking for Maria yet.

CNN TIMELINE

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/08/us/oldest-cold-case/ch3.html

 

[PrimeSuspect]

First-time poster. I’ve been following the case of Maria Ridulph with some interest for the past week or so, and spent an inordinate amount of time the past few days going over it. I was of course at first fascinated, wondering how they could possibly get a conviction so many years after the crime had been committed.

Well – they got the conviction. And I say this will the utmost respect and sympathy for the family of Maria Ridulph - my kids are Maria's age - but I just can’t shake the very ugly taste it leaves in my mouth. Nobody should be brought to trial, let alone convicted, based on the evidence presented at trial (and based on the evidence that -wasn't- allowed to be presented at trial). Not if ‘reasonable doubt’ and ‘rule of law’ means anything in this country. Far too much simply doesn't add up.

This will get a bit long, so I'll split it up into a couple of posts. Hopefully some of you that have been following the case longer than I have can shed some light on what to me seems serious problems with the case.

For starters: at the time, Kathy said that the man who called himself Johnny had ‘long, blond hair that curled in front and flopped onto his forehead’.

This is the picture of Johnny in 1957 – third from the right, the only picture with a black background and the only picture with the guy looking at the camera:
View attachment 70015
Nothing in this picture suggests ‘long blond hair’ with a curl so long it ‘flops onto his forehead’. If that’s the memory of Johnny she had ‘seared into her memory’, there’s no way looking at that picture should have looked familiar to her.

He does fit her description in this photo. We can't assume to know what photos Kathy was shown or what she remembers, jmo.

http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/08/us/oldest-cold-case/ch2.html

 

[DragonAsh]

He does fit her description in this photo. We can't assume to know what photos Kathy was shown or what she remembers, jmo.

http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/08/us/oldest-cold-case/ch2.html

a) That is not 'long blonde hair'.

b) Yes we absolutely can assume to know *exactly* what photos Kathy was shown, if the cops followed protocol: there are specific guidelines that have to be followed in having witnesses pick people out of a lineup or out of a lineup of photographs. The guidelines are in place to minimize the risk of people a) giving the answer they think the detectives want to hear, and b) unconsciously injecting a bias into the selection.

The police can't show Kathy a bunch of pictures of Johnny, then say, 'here's a lineup of 6 guys, who looks familiar'?

For example - one of the guidelines is that the pictures should be identical in terms of cropping, color, background, etc. The pictures she saw? Only one picture had a dark background. Only one picture had the subject looking directly at the camera. Only one person is not in a suit jacket. Only one photo screams out, 'I'm different from the others!'.


c) She picked someone out of a lineup not long after the actual case - presumably when johnny's face was even more fresh in her memory. She was completely wrong, the guy had an airtight alibi.

So she was wrong then, but we should believe - beyond a reasonable doubt - that 55 years later, she got it right this time?

And that is even before we get into how the timeline simply does not work.