From Under the Elm Tree: The Kidnapping & Murder of Maria Ridulph
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The small town of Sycamore, Illinois is excited for Christmas. Seven-year-old Maria Riddle had a belly full of her favorite supper: rabbit legs with carrots, potatoes, and a glass of milk. Snow had fallen the night before, and Maria wanted to play outside with her best friend, Kathy Sigman. She begged her mother, Frances, to let her go outside. Mom said, "Okay, but make sure you dress warmly."

Maria and Kathy met on the corner of Archie Place and Centre Cross Street. Under a thick elm tree, the girls played their favorite game, Duck the Cars. In Duck the Cars, players wait until they see headlights coming down the road. Then, they must scamper between the elm tree on Archie and the light pole across the street before the headlights pass. It's not the safest game in the world, but passing cars were the least of these girls' worries.

They had just arrived at the elm tree when a young, good-looking man approached them. He had blonde hair, a narrow face, big teeth, and a high voice. He said his name was Johnny, and he asked the girls if they'd like a piggyback ride. The naive girls didn't know any better, but who could blame them? Sycamore, Illinois, was a small town of 7,000 people at the time. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everybody, and nobody locked their doors at night.

The biggest danger to children was a mild case of the flu. After a round of piggyback rides up and down Center Cross Street, Johnny asked the girls if they liked to play with dolls. Maria's eyes burst with excitement, and she ran home to get her favorite one. Meanwhile, Kathy stayed behind with Johnny. Maria erupted through the door and began rummaging through her play chest. Her father, Michael, was in the living room watching a Western on TV.

Frances glanced over her newspaper and saw Maria looking for a toy. She suggested taking the rubber doll, as it wouldn't get damaged in the snow. Maria agreed and was off as quickly as she'd come. That was the last time Michael and Frances ever saw their little girl. She ran back to the corner and rejoined Kathy and Johnny. Now, Kathy was feeling cold, so she ran home to get a better pair of mittens.

She asked Maria to come with her, but Maria didn't want to. She'd stay behind with Johnny, hoping for an extra piggyback ride. When Kathy returned, Maria and Johnny were gone. She called to them, but her shrill voice only cracked and echoed in the cold December air. She ran to the Ridolf home, where she found Maria's brother, Chuck, listening to music with a friend in the garage. She told him Maria was missing,

and both boys sprung into action. They sprinted down Archie Place, calling for Maria. A police car passed, but the boys were too late by the time they tried to stop it. It turned the corner and vanished in the light snowfall. Meanwhile, Kathy's mother called the Riddle Farm after learning about Johnny and Maria's disappearance. Both mothers exchanged panicked phone calls, and their respective husbands tried calming them down.

Michael recalled an incident from a year prior when little Maria wandered off without a trace. She turned up hours later, just as the neighborhood dads mustered a search party. Michael remembered the embarrassment and didn't want to feel that way again. Frances's motherly instincts told her to overrule her husband. At 8:10 p.m., she drove to the police station and reported Maria missing. Police and neighborhood volunteers combed the streets.

Several men ran to Ralph Tessier's home at 227 Centercross Street, where he lived with his wife, Eileen, and their seven children. Ralph owned a hardware store, and the neighborhood fathers hoped to borrow flashlights and other supplies. They also knew Tessier's 17-year-old son, John, was more than capable of helping with the search. Unfortunately, John wasn't home. Remember that fact.

as it'll play a significant role later in the story. During the search, somebody found Maria's rubber dolly abandoned on the side of the road. She'd never part ways with it, not by choice. Something happened to Maria that night, something unimaginable. Sadly, the Ridolfs would have to wait another 55 years for closure. The kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridolf is among the oldest cold cases in American history.

So, let's start from the beginning. From the time Maria vanished from under the elm tree to the moment her alleged killer was tried, convicted, sentenced, and, ultimately, acquitted. Part 1: A Mother's Lie Something evil had been brewing in Sycamore in the weeks leading up to Maria's kidnapping. After Halloween, residents began noticing obscene images and words drawn in chalk at the intersection of Centre Cross and Archie.

The elm tree where Maria and Kathy liked to play was heavily vandalized at one point. Hours before Maria went missing, an overcoat-clad man spotted two unrelated girls walking near the public library, about a mile from the elm tree on Archie Place. He tried striking up a conversation, but the girls felt he was strange and ducked inside a restaurant to avoid him.

When they left, they found about a half dozen images of naked women on the sidewalk where the man was standing. The morning after Maria disappeared, a headline in the afternoon paper confirmed what everybody already knew. It read: "Missing girl: 7. Feared kidnapped." Police suspected foul play from the start. They searched every car entering and leaving the Sycamore area. They questioned everybody they could think of.

On day three of the search, a female tipster called the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office and told them about a boy named Johnny Treshner who matched the description of Johnny she'd read about in the paper. Two FBI agents investigated the lead but found nobody named Treshner listed in DeKalb County. That got them thinking of Ralph Tessier and his 17-year-old son, John. Perhaps the tipster misspoke, or the operator wrote the name incorrectly.

Sycamore police had already been back to the Tessier home on December 4th. When they asked about John's whereabouts on the night of December 3rd, his mother, Eileen, said he was home all night. According to John's five younger sisters, that was a lie. When the FBI came knocking, Eileen Tessier sang a different tune. She and Ralph acknowledged that John matched the description of Johnny they saw in the papers. But John couldn't have done it.

He was allegedly in Rockford, a city about 40 miles northwest of Sycamore. According to his parents, John hadn't been home in several days. On December 2nd, he left for Chicago to undergo a physical exam for the US Air Force. From there, he caught a train to Rockford, where the enlistment office was located. When John got to Rockford, he called home and asked his father for a ride.

He'd left his car in Sycamore and used trains and taxis to get around. The Rockford Post Office timestamped the phone call at 6:57 p.m. on December 3rd, 1957. The operator jotted the caller's name down as John Tassier. From there, John went to the enlistment office, where two Air Force recruiters confirmed talking to him around 7:15 p.m.

It's unclear if these FBI agents ever spoke to the Sycamore police officers who interviewed Eileen Tessier on December 4th. If they had, they would have known she told two different stories. Her daughters, who overheard both conversations, never spoke up. Based on the current timeline, the FBI deemed it impossible for John to have kidnapped and killed Maria while traveling between the three cities.

They believed the killer had taken Maria closer to 7pm, based on multiple eyewitness statements and Kathy's retelling of the story. Others poked holes in that timeline. For example, Sycamore's police chief, William Hindenburg, said the girls were outside playing closer to 6pm. Maria's mother claims it could have been as early as 5:50.

Meanwhile, the DeKalb County Sheriff said Maria didn't call Kathy's home and ask her to come outside until 6:30. The half-hour window is crucial to the case, and the investigators and lawyers have been arguing about it for over half a century. A week after Maria's disappearance, police told residents to keep an eye out for scavengers. They believed she was dead and that her body had been likely dumped somewhere nearby.

Swarms of vultures and buzzards could lead them right to it. Meanwhile, the FBI was running out of time and funds. 29 agents had taken up shop in Sycamore, costing the agency $3,600 per day, or about $40,000 in today's money. After two weeks, they had tracked down 250 leads and interviewed over 200 suspects. Everything came up empty.

and agents still had about 125 leads left to explore. Christmas came and went. The holiday season was somber that year in Sycamore. The local paper ran a front page story about Maria with a picture of her family opening presents under the tree. Maria's parents had bought her a typewriter that year. As for John Tessier, he was already off the FBI's list of possible suspects.

He reported for basic training on December 11th and never returned to Sycamore again, not until 2011, when he was arrested and charged with the murder of Maria Ridolf.

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Part 2. Commando John Tessier and Maria Ridolf grew up under polar opposite circumstances.

Maria was the youngest of four children born to Michael and Francis Ridolf. While most people in the town worked on local farms, Maria's father worked in a wire and cable factory, making about $80 a week. Her mother stayed home and cared for the children. Money was, obviously, tight. Maria was an honor student at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran School.

She was always a nervous girl, according to Francis, and would scream and become hysterical whenever she was in trouble. Whoever took Maria would have to kill her to keep her quiet. John Tessier was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in November 1939. His father, Sam Cherry, was a sergeant in the British Army. His mother, Eileen McCullough, was among the first female plane spotters in the Royal Air Force.

Since his parents were in the Royal Army, John spent his early childhood with an elderly couple from the English countryside. He had little interaction with other people and children and spent many nights worrying for his parents as German planes peppered London with bombs. John's biological father died during World War II. Eileen later married Ralph Tessier, who served in the 8th Army Air Force at RAF Bovingdon Base in England.

They moved to America after the war and settled in Sycamore when John was seven. The Tessiers lived around the corner from the Ridolf home. Like everyone else in Sycamore, they knew Maria and the rest of her family well. Ralph left the Air Force and began working as a sign painter. He was locally famous for painting the logos on the doors of Sycamore police cars. The work led to a lifelong friendship with the chief of police. John always saw himself as a protector.

He was known to walk the streets of Sycamore in camouflage pants while carrying a wooden sword. Local kids called him Commando. In the 10th grade, John was expelled after pushing his teacher and calling her an unsavory name. It's unclear if he continued his education after that. John spent 13 years in the military, rising to the rank of captain before he was discharged.

In 1974, he moved to Seattle and enrolled in the King County Law Enforcement Academy. He graduated and became a police officer, bouncing between departments in Lacey, Milton, and Tacoma, Washington. He got married, had two children, and was divorced shortly after. As a cop in Lacey, he met his second wife, Laura, but that marriage didn't last long either. According to John, they broke up because he cheated on her.

While working for Tacoma PD, the chief described him as a constant screw-up. John racked up several complaints, many of which involved local women. In one incident, John arrested a woman for DUI. They struck up a relationship and she later moved into his apartment. Another time, a woman complained about someone slipping obscene photographs through her window. John responded to the call and it wasn't long before they wound up in a relationship.

To the chief, it seemed that John used his role as a police officer to pick up women. Things escalated in 1982 when John took in a 15-year-old runaway named Michelle Weinman. Michelle had recently fled the clutches of her abusive father. She had a friend in Tacoma who said she knew a policeman they could stay with. John welcomed the girls with open arms, offering them the hideaway bed in his living room.

He took Michelle on dates to the movies and dinner. He let her drive his squad car and work the sirens, but always made sure she did well in school. He taught her how to dress and how to wear makeup. To Michelle, John was just being friendly. In an interview with CNN, she said, "I was raised to fear God, trust police officers, and respect teachers." Then things got weird.

John began massaging her and would yank her pants down to rubber buttocks. It made her uncomfortable, but Michelle never spoke a word of it. She felt grateful that John had put a roof over her head. If this was the price, so be it. John kept pushing the envelope. He began kissing the girls goodnight, light kisses at first, which eventually turned into boyfriend kisses, as Michelle described them.

The final straw came when John snuck up on the sofa bed one night. She awoke to him performing oral sex on her. She couldn't move. She couldn't scream. She was scared, ashamed, and letting it happen. She told her friend, who went to the school counselor the next day. The school pulled Michelle out of class and asked her to tell her story. Unfortunately, the police didn't believe her. They called her a tramp and said she probably wanted it.

They threatened to make her life a living hell and drag her through the mud if she spoke of it again. The cops, all men, worked for a department in the neighboring town. They didn't have to know John personally, he was a fellow officer, and they'd defend him until the bitter end. Ultimately, John was charged with statutory rape but pleaded down to a lesser charge of communication with a minor for immoral purposes.

He denies that he ever sexually assaulted Michelle Weinman and only took the deal because he couldn't afford a lawyer. The plea deal earned him a year of probation and he was allowed to quietly resign from the Milton Police Department on March 10th, 1982.

After leaving the force, John took up photography in the early 1980s. One of his models introduced him to a woman named Denise Trexler, who, like Michelle, had just escaped an abusive relationship. She needed a protector. She needed Commando. Denise was an intelligent, self-made woman. She earned good money as an engineer, building electrical systems for commercial trucks.

John attached himself like a leech. He acted like her personal bodyguard and moved himself into her middle-class home. They were married within three months. And like John's other relationships, this one didn't last long either. According to Denise, John became controlling and mentally abusive. He had the emotional level of a four-year-old, but could manipulate her like soft clay. John rarely spoke about his family.

The one time his parents came to Seattle, Denise considered them wonderful people. She also noticed that John's mother controlled him like a puppet master. He seemed afraid of and intimidated by her. To John's credit, he never mistreated Denise sexually. According to her, their relationship was mostly platonic. Two incidents did disturb her, though. John's 12-year-old daughter from a prior marriage would stay with them for short stints.

One morning, Denise came downstairs to find them in the kitchen. John was holding a banana in a suggestive way and making sexual comments. Another time, Denise was rummaging through a desk when she felt one of the drawers catch. She reached under to see what was blocking it and found a picture taped to the underside. It was a naked photo of John's daughter.

John and Denise were together on and off until 1989, when John confessed to meeting somebody else. Denise didn't fight, and they both went their separate ways. Part three, 100 miles west of Sycamore. Back in Sycamore, police and FBI agents were still coming up empty. It had been months since Maria vanished, and nobody knew if she was still alive. Then, everything changed on April 26th, 1958.

Frank Sitar and his wife were on vacation in northern Illinois and inquired about a good spot to hunt wild mushrooms. A local guide pointed them toward Herman Bonnet Woods in Woodbine, about 10 minutes from their hotel and 100 miles west of Sycamore.

They ventured to the spot and searched the thick underbrush about 400 feet from the highway. That's when Frank spotted what he assumed to be a deer carcass. "I came up to it then and I could see some bones, and I thought somebody had shot a dog," he told reporters at the time. "I looked closer and it looked like human bones." He knew he'd found something significant when he stumbled upon a little girl's skull.

Maria's parents didn't need dental records to confirm what they already knew. Her father always said that if a child's body was found wearing such socks, it would be Maria. When Maria's mother arrived, she immediately noticed a patch she'd sewn into her daughter's black and white flannel shirt. She was finally laid to rest inside a small white casket under a warm spring sky. Over 300 people attended her funeral at the Lutheran Church of St. John.

her best friend Kathy stood by under intense police guard. The investigation officially pivoted to a homicide. Because Maria's body never crossed state lines, the FBI didn't have jurisdiction. It was up to local police and the DeKalb County Sheriff's Department to solve Maria's case. And they didn't have much to work with. DNA was still several decades away,

and Maria's body was far too decomposed to determine a cause of death. They didn't observe any trauma or broken bones, suggesting she may have been smothered or poisoned. That meant the murder weapon was likely long gone or impossible to connect to a suspect.

Sycamore Police Lieutenant Patrick Solar thought he caught a break in 1988 when 66-year-old William Henry Redmond was charged with the 1951 kidnapping and murder of 8-year-old Jane Marie Althoff. Unfortunately, the case against Redmond was dismissed when the officer in charge refused to disclose the name of a confidential informant who helped capture him.

Nevertheless, Redmond, who was a carnival worker at the time of Jane's murder, he confessed to strangling her after she kept pestering him for extra Ferris wheel rides. Police later discovered Redmond's fingerprints all over the truck cab where Jane's body was found. Lieutenant Solar was convinced that Redmond was responsible for Maria Ridolf's murder, so confident that he officially closed the case after Redmond died in 1992.

Then, another death in 1994 brought the case back to the most obvious suspect. Eileen Tessier was dying. Her body was riddled with cancer, and she needed so desperately to get something off her chest. Her daughters, Janet and Mary Pat, were present in the hospital room on January 23, 1994. With one of her final breaths, Eileen urgently called, "Janet!"

Janet came over, and Eileen allegedly whispered in her ear, "Those two little girls, and the one that disappeared, John did it. He did it. And you have to tell someone." Eileen passed away shortly after this deathbed confession. Janet took it to mean that her half-brother, John, was responsible for Maria Ridolf's murder. Even worse, her mother had kept it a secret all these years.

But was it an authentic confession or the ramblings of a cancer patient high on morphine? Janet believed it was true and she was well within her rights. She and John had a rocky relationship to say the least. When Janet was 21 and still trying to chart the rest of her life, big brother John invited her to stay with him in Tacoma, Washington. Janet always saw John as a protector.

She thought he was some kind of war hero, and she was excited to help with his new photography business. But John had a dark side that Janet had never seen before. One day, during an argument, John drew a gun and slammed it on the table. He threatened to kill Janet and dump her body where nobody would ever find it. The next day, Janet backed up and flew home to Sycamore. John was dead to her.

She carried her mother's deathbed confession around for 15 years before someone would listen, so Lara's premature closing of Maria's case also didn't help. Then, in 2008, somebody finally gave Janet the time of day. Officer Tony Ropich was a state police commander stationed in Elgin, Illinois, a city 25 miles east of Sycamore.

He knew the Maria Ridolf case like the back of his hand, as did every Illinois officer born after 1957. By then, John Tessier had legally changed his name to Jack McCullough in honor of his late mother, as McCullough was her maiden name.

He was on his fourth marriage in his early 70s and living in a retirement community northwest of Seattle. Rapich was combing through tips when he saw an email from Janet Tessier. It read, "Sycamore, Illinois, December 1957. A seven-year-old child named Maria Ridolf vanished. Her remains were found in another county several miles away in the early spring of 1958.

I still believe that John Samuel Tessier from Sycamore, Illinois was and is responsible for her death. He is living in the Seattle-Tacoma, Washington area under the name Jack Daniel McCullough. I've given information to the person responsible for the cold case in Sycamore. I've done this a few times. Nothing is ever done. This is the last time I mention this to anyone.

"What information I do have makes Tessier McCullough a viable suspect and worth looking into. I'm not going to keep doing this over and over. It's exhausting and it dredges up painful, horrible memories." Rapich could sense Janet's frustration in those last few lines. He decided to give her a chance. She told him about Eileen's deathbed confession and that her brother wasn't to be trusted. Police found a common thread among all the Tessier siblings.

John was estranged, and they only had negative things to say about him. That's when his sister, Jeannie, came forward with a heartbreaking story. She claimed John molested her when they were growing up. He'd also force her to watch while he molested other girls in the neighborhood. Then, when she was 14, John offered her like sexual meat to his buddies while home on military leave.

As police dug into the new John Tessier angle, they uncovered several never-before-seen facts about the case. Let's start with the piggyback rides. It's well documented that Johnny offered Maria and Kathy piggyback rides under the elm tree that fateful December night. Years prior, John offered piggyback rides to another neighborhood girl named Pamela Long. Thankfully, she lived long enough to tell the tale.

She knew John by name and appearance. She also knew the neighborhood kids liked to make fun of him and call him Commando. His grandparents lived behind her home in the most affluent part of Sycamore. One day, John approached her while walking around with his wooden sword and camo pants. He offered her a piggyback ride, and she couldn't resist. Her father caught them in the act and flew into a fit of rage.

He warned John to stay away from his daughter and reported the incident to Sycamore PD, but nothing ever happened. That's likely because John's father was buddy-buddy with the chief. The FBI didn't think the story was relevant when they interviewed the Long family. John could have given piggyback rides to every girl in Sycamore before December 3rd, 1957. It still wouldn't have made him a killer. His ironclad alibi proved he wasn't in town when Maria vanished.

officers spent the rest of the 2010s trying to dismantle it. Part Four: The Alibi The Maria Ridolf case boils down to one critical timestamp. At 6:57 p.m. on December 3rd, somebody identifying as John Tessier called the Tessier home from the post office in Rockford, Illinois, roughly 40 miles northwest of Sycamore.

If the original theory is true, that Johnny kidnapped Maria sometime between 6:30 and 7:00, then it would be impossible for John Tessier to grab her, kill her, and be in Rockford in time to make that phone call. Then, there was the matter of transportation. John claims he took trains from Sycamore to Chicago and, eventually, Rockford between December 2nd and 3rd. He only called home on the 3rd to ask his father for a ride.

This train story fell apart when police uncovered an unpunched, one-way military-issued train ticket from Rockford to Chicago, dated December 2nd, 1957. In their minds, John never took the train as he claimed. Instead, he found another way to get to Chicago, most likely his own car. Everyone in Sycamore knew John's car. It was a two-door 1948 Coupe with flames painted on it.

Nobody other than John was allowed to drive it. An old high school friend claimed he saw the 48 coupe driving around Sycamore on the afternoon of December 3rd. At the time, John was dating a local girl named Jan Edwards. They were supposed to meet for a date at 9:20 when John got home from Rockford. But her parents were so distraught over Maria's disappearance that they refused to let Jan go out.

Police tracked Jan to Florida and asked if she had an old picture of John they could use for a photo lineup. Since he was expelled in the 10th grade, there wasn't a high school yearbook photo on record that would have shown what Johnny looked like at the time. They caught a massive break when Jan discovered a photo from a summer formal in 1957. It was a perfect headshot of John Tessier on a black background. She quickly mailed it from Florida to Sycamore.

When it arrived, our officers found a bonus hidden inside, the unpunched train ticket. It's unclear if the ticket had been there since 1957 or if Jan had held on to it all this time for reasons unknown. Police hit a roadblock when the recruiting station in Chicago confirmed that John had taken a physical exam there on the morning of December 3rd.

He left around noon and wasn't seen again until 7:15 p.m. in Rockford when he arrived at a different recruiting station. Nobody can prove his whereabouts between noon and 7:15 on the 3rd. Yes, the Rockford post office caller identified himself as John Tessier, but there's no proof that it was really John. To alter the timeline, police had to lean on neutral witnesses,

The first was an oil delivery driver who knew Kathy and the Sigman family. He recalls Kathy waving to him when he arrived at the big White House on the corner of Archie Place and Center Cross around 6:00 PM. He spent about 15 minutes filling the oil tank and was back in his truck at 6:20. As he left, he looked to see if the girls were still playing under the tree. He claims they were gone.

Next, the police spoke with a city bus driver who passed the corner at 6:30. They claimed nobody was there, thus corroborating the oil man's story. Police in the late 2000s concluded that Maria was taken between 6 and 6:20, about 40 minutes to an hour earlier than previously thought. If that's true, John Tessier could have easily pulled it off. A new theory quickly emerged.

John never took the train from Rockford to Chicago. Instead, he drove there in his '48 coupe, took his physical, and returned to Sycamore later that afternoon. He stalked the area where he knew Maria and Kathy liked to play, then parked his car down a nearby alley. Between 6:00 and 6:20, John approached the girls, offered them piggyback rides, and then kidnapped Maria.

He tossed her in the back of his car and drove 40 miles northwest to Rockford, where he called home to see if anybody was looking for a missing little girl. Armed with a mountain of never-before-seen evidence, police in Sycamore believed they had finally cracked one of America's longest cold cases. They flew out to Seattle and slapped the cuffs on their primary suspect. Part 5: Half a Century in the Making

With John in handcuffs, police could finally investigate his checkered past. In Okanagan County, Washington, they found a storage container listed in John's name. It seemed abandoned, hidden almost. About 20 acres outside of Tenasket, a small town of about 1,100 people. Inside the container, police found thousands of photos of scantily clad women.

They held whips and chains and wore dog collars, leather boots, and tight bustiers. When officers reached out to these models, they described how John plied them with alcohol and claimed he worked for a famous artistic magazine.

The discovery led police to John's third wife, Denise Trexler, who told them about the lewd photographs of John's daughter. Later on, Denise learned that, while she was at work, John would take more suggestive photos of his daughter and her middle school friends. Sadly, John's daughter, who went missing in 2005 while living in San Antonio, Texas, was found dead on a golf course a few days after her disappearance.

Upon identifying the body in 2013, police learned that the girl's middle name was Maria. And that wasn't the only coincidence either. When Seattle police arrested John in 2011, they first knocked on his apartment door. Unit number 616. Maria Ridolf lived at 616 Archie Place, Sycamore, Illinois. During the interrogation, John became physically uncomfortable when officers brought up sex and his family.

He denied having sex with his sister and claimed they were just playing around. When Maria Ridolf came up, John looked police officers in the eyes and said, "I did not have anything to do with that little girl. She was loved in the neighborhood." He described Maria as a stunningly beautiful young girl with big brown eyes. She was "lovely, lovely, lovely." To police officers, it sounded like John was describing somebody he was deeply in love with.

When pressed on the unused train ticket, John said he must have hitchhiked. He maintains that his car never left his parents' driveway between December 2nd and December 3rd. After an eight-hour interrogation, police officially arrested John Tessier, aka Jack McCullough, for the murder of Maria Ridolf more than 50 years after the fact.

Prosecutors faced an uphill battle. Most of their star witnesses were long dead, and John's alibi seemed rock solid. They tried exhuming Maria's body, hoping to find some DNA evidence. All they had was a rotting corpse that smelled worse than anything you can imagine. Because Maria was so badly decomposed when they found her, the funeral home couldn't embalm the body.

Instead, they sprinkled her with lime, assuming nobody would ever open her tiny white coffin. While they never found any DNA, modern doctors with modern gadgets could finally determine a cause of death. Maria was stabbed to death, evidenced by the tiny nicks on her sternum and vertebrae. Someone plunged a long, sharp object into her throat at least three times. According to reports, Maria's stench lingered in the building

Ironically, the Sycamore coroner's office is located in the basement of the jail. Some felt it fitting that John Tessier had to sit there and smell Maria's body for several days. At the time, John faced two trials, one for Maria's murder and one for raping his sister. Prosecutors decided to try the rape case first, as a guilty conviction could help them during the future murder trial. Unfortunately, things didn't go their way.

John's defense team asked to try the case before a single judge rather than a jury. The judge, Robin Stuckert, couldn't understand why Jeannie waited so long to come forward with the allegations against her brother. She felt the timing was too convenient. Jeannie never wanted to file charges and only went along with it because she thought it would help the Maria Ridolf investigation. There were also many holes in Jeannie's story that the prosecution couldn't fill.

In the end, the judge ruled in John's favor and acquitted him on all charges. John's murder trial began with two critical rulings by a different judge. Both had to do with hearsay and its place in the courtroom. During a trial, there are two types of testimony: direct and hearsay. Direct testimony is what a witness hears and sees with their own ears and eyes. Hearsay is when a witness repeats something told to them by somebody else.

In most cases, hearsay evidence isn't permissible because the accused can't confront their accuser. There are exceptions, like when the witness is dead. In John's case, his mother's deathbed confession was considered hearsay. Prosecutors argued for an exception because confessing was against her own interests. Her saying, "John did it," suggests that Eileen knew about the murder,

If she were still alive, she could face criminal charges for running cover all these years. The judge ruled in their favor and allowed Eileen's deathbed confession into the trial. On the other side, John's defense team wanted their own hearsay exception. Their entire case rested on the FBI reports from 1957 that allegedly cleared his name. In Illinois, police reports and documents cannot replace actual witnesses.

Typically, the authors of those reports are called to testify on what they wrote. Unfortunately for John, the agents who wrote his report in 1957 were long dead. John's team argued that hearsay rules barring police reports are meant to protect defendants. In this case, the reports would help prove the defendants' innocence. The judge rejected their argument. The FBI reports would not be permissible.

The only person who could attest to John's alibi was John himself, but putting him on the stand would open him to cross-examination. John's defense team didn't want to take that risk. He never took the stand, and the jury never heard about his alibi. During the trial, the prosecution called three jailhouse snitches. They all claimed John talked about killing Maria while they were held at DeKalb County Jail. They, however, told three different stories.

The only thing they agreed on was that John strangled Maria to death, contradicting the stabbing theory put forth by the doctor. Who are you going to believe? Three jailhouse snitches who'll say anything to reduce their sentences, or a doctor with decades of experience? The most convincing testimony came from Kathy Sigman, who was in her mid-60s when the prosecution called her to the stand.

She told the story as she'd been telling it for 50 years, that she and Maria were playing duck the cars when Johnny approached and offered them piggyback rides. Kathy ran home to grab mittens. When she returned, Johnny and Maria were gone. For the jury, the decision came easy. John Tessier/Jack McCullough was found guilty of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to life in prison. He'd be eligible for parole when he was 93 years old.

Olive Sycamore took a collective sigh of relief as police escorted John from the courtroom. Maria Rudolph and her family finally had justice, but justice wouldn't last long. Part six, it all falls apart. John Tessier appealed his conviction as soon as possible.

In February 2015, the Illinois Appellate Court upheld the murder charge but vacated his convictions for abduction and kidnapping, as they fell outside the statute of limitations under 1957 law. They also determined that Eileen McCullough's deathbed confession should not have been allowed into the trial. But, because the judge didn't rely heavily on it, they didn't believe it was enough to overturn the murder conviction.

Later that year, the new DeKalb County State's Attorney, Richard Schmack, took another look at John's case. Nothing made sense. He couldn't figure out why the judge refused to let the FBI reports in as evidence but allowed Eileen's deathbed confession. After combing through everything, Richard came to a shocking conclusion: John is innocent. He brought the case before a judge.

claiming that police and prosecutors tweaked the timeline to prove their own case. They focused on testimony that suggested Maria was kidnapped closer to 6 o'clock, and ignored evidence that proved otherwise. According to Schmack, there's no evidence that Maria vanished a little after 6, as the Illinois State Police suggest.

Instead, the FBI got it right back in 1957, when they said she vanished between 6:45 and 7:00 when John was in Rockford. In April 2016, an Illinois Circuit Court judge vacated John's murder charge, leaving him open to a new trial. Then, a week later, another judge dismissed the charges without prejudice, meaning John was a free man, but the state could still charge him again.

Finally, on April 12th, 2017, a DeKalb County Circuit Court ruled that John Tessier/Jack McCullough was innocent. In response, John said, "I am innocent, proven innocent, and I want my name back. I have been put forward as a monster, and people still believe I am a monster." As for Maria's family, the news broke their hearts all over again. "It's been horrid," her sister Patty Quinn said.

John may have been a weird guy with many skeletons in his closet, but, in the words of his lawyer, he couldn't have kidnapped and murdered Maria Ridolf. So, going on 60 years, the question remains, who did?

Hey guys, thanks for listening. I want to give you all a quick heads up regarding some upcoming political ads you may start hearing leading up to this year's presidential election.

These ads do not represent my own political viewpoint. So if you hear a political ad play on the podcast and it's not in my own voice, then it has absolutely nothing to do with me personally as a podcaster. Thank you again for being a dedicated listener of mine, and I can't wait to have another amazing year with you guys. I'll see you in the next episode.