Dennis, you did not write the entire story. Not anywhere close to that. You never interviewed the Tessier family members. You didn't interview Charles Ridulph, nor his surviving sister. You didn't interview a heck of a lot of people. If people want to read your book, they're welcome to do so, but they should know it isn't researched well, and that you neglected to gather enough information to warrant calling it "the entire story".
IL IL - Maria Ridulph, 7, Sycamore, 3 Dec 1957
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Thank you JTSparks for your comment on our book, and thanks to Webslueths for the opportunity to respond.
While I accept your comment stating, "you didn't not write the entire story" as your opinion, I reject it as a logical conclusion to the premise that we, "didn't interview a heck of a lot of people."
I recently read Professor Harvey Kaye's biography, "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America." Kaye, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, never interviewed Paine, nor did he interview many of the people he quoted or cited. In fact, Wisconsin wasn't even a state during Paine's lifetime. And yet, his book is considered an excellent source of info on Mr. Paine.
While I agree with you that we didn't interview members of the Tessier or Ridulph families, that doesn't mean the print and visual media aren't full of information about them and this case. We also didn't interview the Illinois State Police.
The police cut off interviews about the case after granting Ann O'Neill of CNN their last interview back in 2013. But Ms. O'Neill was refused interviews by the Ridulph and Tessier family, claiming they had given Charles Lachman the exclusive rights to their stories. Coauthor Jeff Doty inquired about interviews and was told the same thing.
We would have loved to interviewed the Ridulph's and Tessier's, but like Professor Kaye, who had no other choice, we mined the media, which was and is rich with relevant info.
We did read Mr. Ridulph's book, which did provide a few bits of relevant info, which we used and cited in our book. We also read Jean Tessier's online memoir, which was rich in information about the Tessier family, and her views on the crime. We used, and cited, what we felt was relevant to the story.
And it is one helluva story!
We started research for our book, "A Convenient Man" in 2015 after McCullough lost his appeal. It looked to us as if he would spend the rest of his life in prison. The original intent of our book, then, was to wave a flag, putting forth the factual evidence proclaiming that an innocent was in prison. But in 2016 he was released, and in 2017 he was granted a Certificate of Innocence. We then had to change the purpose of our book, and settled on writing an expose' on how this injustice happened.
The book itself is 687 pages long, with 244 footnotes referencing where we got the info for each fact in the book. There are two appendices: The first showing the principal exhibits in the story, and Appendix B, which gives a detailed timeline of 12/3/57 starting at 3:30pm and going all the way to midnight. Appendix B starts on page 701 and goes till page 735. I'm very proud of these 35 pages because they can be used as a lens through which to view much of the testimony and courtroom arguments made at the trial and the appeal, and to see why they are wrong.
I'll make you an offer JTSparks: I will gift you a copy of the Kindle version of the book if you're willing to give it a read. If you want the paperback version, that's a bit more expensive, but I'll work with you on it.
Thanks,
Dennis
While I accept your comment stating, "you didn't not write the entire story" as your opinion, I reject it as a logical conclusion to the premise that we, "didn't interview a heck of a lot of people."
I recently read Professor Harvey Kaye's biography, "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America." Kaye, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, never interviewed Paine, nor did he interview many of the people he quoted or cited. In fact, Wisconsin wasn't even a state during Paine's lifetime. And yet, his book is considered an excellent source of info on Mr. Paine.
While I agree with you that we didn't interview members of the Tessier or Ridulph families, that doesn't mean the print and visual media aren't full of information about them and this case. We also didn't interview the Illinois State Police.
The police cut off interviews about the case after granting Ann O'Neill of CNN their last interview back in 2013. But Ms. O'Neill was refused interviews by the Ridulph and Tessier family, claiming they had given Charles Lachman the exclusive rights to their stories. Coauthor Jeff Doty inquired about interviews and was told the same thing.
We would have loved to interviewed the Ridulph's and Tessier's, but like Professor Kaye, who had no other choice, we mined the media, which was and is rich with relevant info.
We did read Mr. Ridulph's book, which did provide a few bits of relevant info, which we used and cited in our book. We also read Jean Tessier's online memoir, which was rich in information about the Tessier family, and her views on the crime. We used, and cited, what we felt was relevant to the story.
And it is one helluva story!
We started research for our book, "A Convenient Man" in 2015 after McCullough lost his appeal. It looked to us as if he would spend the rest of his life in prison. The original intent of our book, then, was to wave a flag, putting forth the factual evidence proclaiming that an innocent was in prison. But in 2016 he was released, and in 2017 he was granted a Certificate of Innocence. We then had to change the purpose of our book, and settled on writing an expose' on how this injustice happened.
The book itself is 687 pages long, with 244 footnotes referencing where we got the info for each fact in the book. There are two appendices: The first showing the principal exhibits in the story, and Appendix B, which gives a detailed timeline of 12/3/57 starting at 3:30pm and going all the way to midnight. Appendix B starts on page 701 and goes till page 735. I'm very proud of these 35 pages because they can be used as a lens through which to view much of the testimony and courtroom arguments made at the trial and the appeal, and to see why they are wrong.
I'll make you an offer JTSparks: I will gift you a copy of the Kindle version of the book if you're willing to give it a read. If you want the paperback version, that's a bit more expensive, but I'll work with you on it.
Thanks,
Dennis
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Thinking of Maria...tomorrow is the 64th anniversary.
And her killer was set free.
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I have a question, and I want someone to correct me if I’m wrong. Is it possible that John did give Maria a piggyback ride and the weird kid in the neighborhood whom he mentioned during his interrogation saw an opportunity to frame him?
The "weird kid" was likely Gerald Brooks, who lived close to the Davy family, on the corner of Archie Place and Fair St. He graduated from Sycamore High in 1955 and was not listed as living with his parents when the FBI made its neighborhood sweep in December 1957. A photo can be found of him in the June 3, 1966 Daily Chronicle. In another article in the Oct 24, 1958 Sycamore Tribune, p. 2, Brooks is described as serving in the Panama Canal zone. So it is likely that he joined the Army at some point after graduation and was far from Sycamore at the time of the kidnapping. Furthermore, John Tessier was exiting Illinois Central train #13 in Rockford at the time of the kidnapping, so he could not have been giving Maria a piggyback ride at the same time.
Would Kathy have recognized someone from their neighborhood right away? Plenty of people have neighbors that they are told to stay away from as kids. Sometimes parents aren’t always clear on why you need to avoid the person. Then there are kids that other kids avoid or bully because they lack social skills or because kids can be mean. The person that abducted Maria knew how to gain their trust and separate the girls. He was alone with each girl. Kathy supposedly declined walking around the block or and didn’t have any interest in going anywhere with him. It makes me think he did’t want a fight at least not in the open. It makes me think he did this before. You could be on to something. A neighbor could have saw a stranger offering little girls piggyback rides and recognized them as a pedo. Chased the guy off and lured a trusting girl into their home.
If this was a total stranger they had to have done this before. It’s sucks that there weren’t more witnesses. I don’t know what to think about the guy that was convicted and then released. There can also be multiple sex offenders in a neighborhood or in the general area at the same time, unfortunately. IDK what to think.
LINK:
The murder that became the oldest solved cold case in America
On Sept. 11, 2008, a woman named Janet Tessier — tormented for 14 years by her mother’s deathbed confession — drafted an e-mail to the Illinois State Police. She had tried to alert authorities twic…
nypost.com
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Maria was the pretty one, slight and graceful at 7 with big brown eyes that shined with warmth and intelligence. Everyone said the second-grader was special and Kathy, who was a year older, felt honored to be her friend.
They lived a few doors away from each other on a side street called Archie Place. It was their whole world in 1957, a time when children played hide-and-seek outside instead of watching television. People didn't lock their doors in this Midwestern farm town because everyone knew everybody else.
Sycamore and its 7,000 souls felt safe on the morning of December 3, 1957, but the feeling wouldn't last.
That first Tuesday in December started like any other for Maria Ridulph and Kathy Sigman, with a short walk across the street to West Elementary School. It was cold, with a promise of snow in the air. After school, they went to Maria's house to cut out paper snowflakes.
A few blocks away, a man in an overcoat spotted two other girls walking along State Street by the public library and tried to strike up a conversation. It was 4:15 p.m. The girls felt uneasy, so they ducked into a restaurant. When they emerged, the man was gone — but he'd left something disturbing behind. Scattered on the sidewalk were half a dozen photographs of nude women.
That wasn't Sycamore's only peculiar hint of the dirty and forbidden. Since Halloween, someone had been scrawling obscenities in chalk on a tree and stop sign at the intersection of Center Cross Street and Archie Place. Maria and Kathy made plans to play there after dinner. It was a favorite spot they hadn't been to since summer.
At 5 p.m. sharp, Kathy went home. Maria's family gathered around the table for her favorite supper: rabbit, carrots, potatoes and milk. She finished off two rabbit legs, but barely touched her vegetables. She pleaded to go back outside as the first flurries of the season started to swirl in the night sky.
Excited, she called Kathy on the phone: I can go outside tonight, can you?
Kathy lived in a white cottage at the end of a long driveway, and her family was the first on the block to own a clothes dryer. Her freshly laundered jeans still felt warm as she met Maria at mid-block and they raced in the dark to the massive elm tree on the corner. They were playing "duck the cars" — scurrying back and forth between the tree and a street pole, trying to avoid the headlights from oncoming cars — when a good-looking young man approached. He wore his blond hair swept back in a ducktail. Kathy remembers his narrow face, big teeth and high, thin voice. She'd never seen him before.
Hello, little girls, he said. Are you having fun?
He asked whether they wanted piggyback rides and gave his name as "Johnny." He told Kathy and Maria that he was 24 and wasn't married.
Do you like dollies?
The girls nodded.
A trial exhibit shows Kathy Sigman with the mittens she fetched from home; when she returned to the corner, Maria was gone
They lived a few doors away from each other on a side street called Archie Place. It was their whole world in 1957, a time when children played hide-and-seek outside instead of watching television. People didn't lock their doors in this Midwestern farm town because everyone knew everybody else.
Sycamore and its 7,000 souls felt safe on the morning of December 3, 1957, but the feeling wouldn't last.
That first Tuesday in December started like any other for Maria Ridulph and Kathy Sigman, with a short walk across the street to West Elementary School. It was cold, with a promise of snow in the air. After school, they went to Maria's house to cut out paper snowflakes.
A few blocks away, a man in an overcoat spotted two other girls walking along State Street by the public library and tried to strike up a conversation. It was 4:15 p.m. The girls felt uneasy, so they ducked into a restaurant. When they emerged, the man was gone — but he'd left something disturbing behind. Scattered on the sidewalk were half a dozen photographs of nude women.
That wasn't Sycamore's only peculiar hint of the dirty and forbidden. Since Halloween, someone had been scrawling obscenities in chalk on a tree and stop sign at the intersection of Center Cross Street and Archie Place. Maria and Kathy made plans to play there after dinner. It was a favorite spot they hadn't been to since summer.
At 5 p.m. sharp, Kathy went home. Maria's family gathered around the table for her favorite supper: rabbit, carrots, potatoes and milk. She finished off two rabbit legs, but barely touched her vegetables. She pleaded to go back outside as the first flurries of the season started to swirl in the night sky.
Excited, she called Kathy on the phone: I can go outside tonight, can you?
Kathy lived in a white cottage at the end of a long driveway, and her family was the first on the block to own a clothes dryer. Her freshly laundered jeans still felt warm as she met Maria at mid-block and they raced in the dark to the massive elm tree on the corner. They were playing "duck the cars" — scurrying back and forth between the tree and a street pole, trying to avoid the headlights from oncoming cars — when a good-looking young man approached. He wore his blond hair swept back in a ducktail. Kathy remembers his narrow face, big teeth and high, thin voice. She'd never seen him before.
Hello, little girls, he said. Are you having fun?
He asked whether they wanted piggyback rides and gave his name as "Johnny." He told Kathy and Maria that he was 24 and wasn't married.
Do you like dollies?
The girls nodded.
A trial exhibit shows Kathy Sigman with the mittens she fetched from home; when she returned to the corner, Maria was gone
Taken: The coldest case ever solved
CNN series explores how cops cracked the coldest case ever solved: the 1957 kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph, 7.
www.cnn.com
A CNN article that will truly forever live in infamy. It did not age well at all.Maria was the pretty one, slight and graceful at 7 with big brown eyes that shined with warmth and intelligence. Everyone said the second-grader was special and Kathy, who was a year older, felt honored to be her friend.
They lived a few doors away from each other on a side street called Archie Place. It was their whole world in 1957, a time when children played hide-and-seek outside instead of watching television. People didn't lock their doors in this Midwestern farm town because everyone knew everybody else.
Sycamore and its 7,000 souls felt safe on the morning of December 3, 1957, but the feeling wouldn't last.
That first Tuesday in December started like any other for Maria Ridulph and Kathy Sigman, with a short walk across the street to West Elementary School. It was cold, with a promise of snow in the air. After school, they went to Maria's house to cut out paper snowflakes.
A few blocks away, a man in an overcoat spotted two other girls walking along State Street by the public library and tried to strike up a conversation. It was 4:15 p.m. The girls felt uneasy, so they ducked into a restaurant. When they emerged, the man was gone — but he'd left something disturbing behind. Scattered on the sidewalk were half a dozen photographs of nude women.
That wasn't Sycamore's only peculiar hint of the dirty and forbidden. Since Halloween, someone had been scrawling obscenities in chalk on a tree and stop sign at the intersection of Center Cross Street and Archie Place. Maria and Kathy made plans to play there after dinner. It was a favorite spot they hadn't been to since summer.
At 5 p.m. sharp, Kathy went home. Maria's family gathered around the table for her favorite supper: rabbit, carrots, potatoes and milk. She finished off two rabbit legs, but barely touched her vegetables. She pleaded to go back outside as the first flurries of the season started to swirl in the night sky.
Excited, she called Kathy on the phone: I can go outside tonight, can you?
Kathy lived in a white cottage at the end of a long driveway, and her family was the first on the block to own a clothes dryer. Her freshly laundered jeans still felt warm as she met Maria at mid-block and they raced in the dark to the massive elm tree on the corner. They were playing "duck the cars" — scurrying back and forth between the tree and a street pole, trying to avoid the headlights from oncoming cars — when a good-looking young man approached. He wore his blond hair swept back in a ducktail. Kathy remembers his narrow face, big teeth and high, thin voice. She'd never seen him before.
Hello, little girls, he said. Are you having fun?
He asked whether they wanted piggyback rides and gave his name as "Johnny." He told Kathy and Maria that he was 24 and wasn't married.
Do you like dollies?
The girls nodded.
A trial exhibit shows Kathy Sigman with the mittens she fetched from home; when she returned to the corner, Maria was gone
Taken: The coldest case ever solved
CNN series explores how cops cracked the coldest case ever solved: the 1957 kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph, 7.www.cnn.com
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Three weeks before Christmas Day 1957, Maria Ridulph was playing in the snow on a street corner in Sycamore, Ill., with her best friend Kathy Sigman Chapman, when a man who introduced himself as “Johnny” approached the two young girls, according to The New York Times.
The stranger offered Maria a piggyback ride and asked to see their toys, said Kathy, the case’s only surviving witness in 2012 when McCullough was sent to prison, according to CNN. Kathy, testifying more than 50 years after the fact, told the court she went home to get her mittens and when she returned “Johnny” and Maria were gone, according to CNN.
Maria’s father soon went searching for his young daughter after Kathy informed the family the girl was gone, according to Northern Public Radio, and the Ridulph family reported their 7-year-old daughter missing about two hours later. According to the outlet, Maria’s body was discovered more than four months later in a wooded area roughly 100 miles away after an extensive search by local, state and federal investigators.
Girl's Abduction and Murder Became 'Oldest Cold Case' in U.S. History. Here's How It Was Solved — Until It Wasn't
Maria Ridulph's 1957 kidnapping and murder shook the town of Sycamore, Ill..
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This is interviews with Maria's family, her mother Francis, father Michael, her siblings Kay (age 15), Patricia (age 16), Chuck (age 11), interviews with her 2nd grade class West Elementary School teacher, Sunday School ect. From FBI report interviews of December 1957 during the abduction of 7 year old Maria.
drive.google.com
These are all the FBI/Police Reports of the Maria Ridulph abduction/murder case from 1957 and 1958.
drive.google.com
sao-2526-2673.pdf
drive.google.com
These are all the FBI/Police Reports of the Maria Ridulph abduction/murder case from 1957 and 1958.
Maria Ridulph - Police and FBI Case Files - Google Drive
drive.google.com
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Here is a press photo that i have. It was taken and published in 1957 during Maria's abduction.
The street corner Center Cross Street and Archie Place in which 7 year old Maria Ridulph was kidnapped while playing with her 8 year old friend Cathie Sigman on the 3rd December 1957. A stranger approached the children and gave Maria a piggyback ride and was kidnapped.
The street corner Center Cross Street and Archie Place in which 7 year old Maria Ridulph was kidnapped while playing with her 8 year old friend Cathie Sigman on the 3rd December 1957. A stranger approached the children and gave Maria a piggyback ride and was kidnapped.
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I thought the information that led to the arrest and "solution" was awfully thin. I really don't think it will ever be truly solved, unless someone finds something in a deceased relative's paperwork.
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i have uploaded all the FBI/police reports from 1957-1958 in my above posts on this page including some 1957 press photos of the case that i obtained.
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