Girl’s Abduction and Murder Became ‘Oldest Cold Case’ in U.S. History. Here’s How It Was Solved — Until It Wasn’t

In 2012, investigators seemingly brought long-awaited closure to one of the nation’s oldest and most high-profile kidnapping cases, solving it after more than 50 years. But less than five years after that, the case unraveled as it became evident the man on whom Illinois investigators pinned 7-year-old Maria Ridulph’s disappearance had been wrongfully convicted of the crime.

Jack McCullough, who changed his name from John Tessier, as he was known around the time of Maria’s 1957 kidnapping and murder, was released from an Illinois prison in 2016, ending a nearly five-year stint for a crime he long maintained had nothing to do with him.

The case remains unsolved after decades of fumbles by local and Illinois state police, who took decades to develop a suspect in Maria’s killing and then “put a thumb on the scale” in order to convict McCullough, a former police officer himself, his attorney Russel Ainsworth told CNN in 2017.

Sixty-seven years after the fact, PEOPLE is looking back at the Maria Ridulph case and how police wrongfully centered the investigation on McCullough 50 years after he was first interviewed about the crime. Here’s what happened.

Maria Ridulph’s Disappearance

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.

McCullough’s Stepsister Turns Him In

McCullough, then known as John Tessier, was a neighbor of the Ridulph family and was questioned by police shortly after Maria’s initial disappearance, according to CNN. His name was initially cleared but police returned their focus on him after his stepsister contacted authorities in 2008, telling them their mother allegedly implicated her son on her own deathbed.

“Those two little girls and the one who disappeared, John did it,” the sister told police her mother had said, according to CNN.

The outlet reports, however, that McCullough long maintained he was not only innocent but couldn’t possibly have committed the crime because he was taking a military recruiting exam in Rockford, Ill., roughly 40 miles away, at the time Maria went missing.

“Nothing else matters if Mr. McCullough was in Rockford at the time,” McCullough’s attorney Russell Ainsworth told CNN after McCullough’s 2016 release. “All of the other evidence falls away. He simply could not have committed this crime.”

McCullough’s high school sweetheart Janice Edwards Swafford had also told a judge at McCullough’s exoneration hearing that he had come to her home around 9:30 p.m. the night Maria went missing after he was in Rockford for the military exam.

“He was really, really excited about passing the physical,” Swafford told the judge, according to CNN, adding that he didn’t appear nervous or that anything was out of the ordinary. “He was happy. He wasn’t anything else. He was just the same old guy.”

McCullough’s Conviction and Release

Based solely on eyewitness testimony from Kathy, who picked McCullough out of a lineup more than 50 years after her 7-year-old friend was kidnapped and murdered, the former police officer was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012, according to Northern Public Radio. The conviction seemingly ended the infamous cold case, which initially caught a wave of attention across the United States, even being mentioned by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and then-FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, according to Northern Public Radio.

But less than five years after the trial, McCullough’s conviction was vacated after evidence was re-examined and it was determined McCullough was, in fact, at a military exam at the time Maria went missing, local ABC 7 reported. His mother’s deathbed assertion was made when she was on morphine and was “pleasantly confused,” a doctor testified. Prosecutors said that investigators used “suggestive” tactics to get eyewitnesses to pick McCullough out of a lineup decades after the crime.

Although the Ridulph family remained convinced McCullough was the man who kidnapped and killed 7-year-old Maria in 1957, according to ABC 7, he was granted his freedom in 2016.

In the year after his release, McCullough won more than $4 million in legal settlements with the state of Illinois, the town of Sycamore and others related to his wrongful conviction, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

“If they had a tiny bit of evidence, maybe I’d think, ‘Could it be?’ “ McCullough’s stepdaughter Janey O’Conner told CBS News, which featured the cold case on 48 Hours in 2013. “But they have no evidence. They have no proof.”

The case remains unsolved.