Death of Maria Ridulph

Maria Elizabeth Ridulph, a seven-year-old second-grader, disappeared from her neighborhood in Sycamore, Illinois, on the evening of December 3, 1957, while playing outside with her friend Kathy Sigman. The girls were approached by a man in his early twenties who identified himself as "Johnny." After giving Maria a piggyback ride, the man was left alone with her while Kathy went home briefly; when Kathy returned, both Maria and "Johnny" were gone. A search involving local police, armed civilians, and the FBI failed to locate Maria. On April 26, 1958, two mushroom hunters found her skeletal remains in a wooded area near Woodbine, Illinois, roughly 90 miles from her home. She was identified through dental records and clothing. The initial autopsy could not determine a cause of death due to decomposition; a later autopsy, conducted decades afterward, suggested she may have been stabbed in the throat, though an appellate court noted this did not rule out other causes such as strangulation.

In 1957, investigators considered several suspects, including John Tessier, a neighbor who provided police with an alibi—corroborated at the time by phone records and recruiting officers—placing him in Rockford, Illinois, at the time of the abduction. He was cleared and the FBI closed its file on him within days. In 1997, Sycamore Police Lieutenant Patrick Solar named a deceased traveling worker, William Henry Redmond, as the likely culprit, though he acknowledged the evidence was circumstantial and called the case "closed, but not solved."

The case was reopened in 2008 after Tessier's half-sister Janet Tessier told authorities that their dying mother had implicated him in 1994. Tessier, who had by then legally changed his name to Jack McCullough, was arrested in 2011 and charged with Maria's kidnapping and murder. At his September 2012 trial, prosecutors presented testimony from Kathy Sigman Chapman identifying McCullough as "Johnny," along with testimony from jailhouse informants and another childhood acquaintance. McCullough was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

An appellate court upheld the murder conviction in 2015 while vacating separate kidnapping convictions on statute-of-limitations grounds. In 2016, newly appointed DeKalb County State's Attorney Richard Schmack conducted a post-conviction review and concluded that phone records showed McCullough had placed a call from Rockford, not Sycamore, at the time of the abduction, making his presence at the crime scene implausible. On April 15, 2016, a judge vacated McCullough's conviction and ordered a new trial; the charges were then dismissed without prejudice, and McCullough was released. On April 12, 2017, the DeKalb County Circuit Court declared McCullough innocent of the crime. The killing of Maria Ridulph remains without an unappealed, standing conviction.