FILE – This July 27, 2011 file photo provided by the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department in Sycamore, Ill., shows Jack McCullough, of Seattle. On Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, the defense rested its case on behalf of McCullough, 72, who is accused of killing 7-year-old Maria Ridulph, of Sycamore in 1957. McCullough was arrested in Seattle in 2011 and returned to Illinois.SYCAMORE, Ill. – Closing arguments are expected Friday at the trial of a former police officer accused of killing an Illinois school girl in 1957 after kidnapping her as she played in a small-town street, marking one of the oldest cold-case murders to make it to court.
Maria Ridulph’s abduction horrified Sycamore, her close-knit farming community west of Chicago, and unsettled parents nationwide. Even then-President Dwight Eisenhower asked to be kept apprised of a massive search for the 7-year-old girl.
Jack McCullough, who was about 17 at the time and lived a few blocks from Maria’s home, is now on trial for her death. The 72-year-old former Washington state police officer has pleaded not guilty.
The case was reopened just a few years ago after McCullough’s girlfriend in the 1950s contacted police with evidence calling his alibi into question. The Seattle man was arrested July 1, 2011, at a retirement home where he worked as a security guard.
The weeklong bench trial at a courthouse near where the second-grader went missing Dec. 3, 1957, has included testimony about dolls, piggyback rides – and a deathbed accusation from the defendant’s mother that her son committed the crime.