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Season Five Home for the Holidays 20
7 Plays9 minutes ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Context
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:28
Speaker
So it only you know serves to fit that having had a really wholesome episode in the lead up of the Home for the Holidays a series to Christmas, that we would also have a case that's pretty terrible.
The Murder Case Unfolds
00:00:43
Speaker
This case, it's a murder case from a long time ago. The sources for today are CNN,
00:00:52
Speaker
and They have a ah long ongoing series. They spill over to the University of Illinois library. They have several articles, journal articles about this case. There are a couple of daily Chronicle articles in here. You can access those on newspaper dot.com. The Kent State University Press has bits and pieces of this. I think there's a book that I couldn't find where some of the quotes in here come from. But this is a horrific case of a missing girl and the trials that sort of have fallen out of what happens when her remains are discovered. So we're gonna talk about her first. Her name is Maria, I think it's pronounced Riddlef. It's just R-I-D-U-L-P-H. ah She was born on March 12th of 1950 to Michael and Francis Riddlef in Sycamore, Illinois.
00:01:46
Speaker
Now Maria is the youngest of four kids. She had two sisters and a brother. The area that they lived in was primarily like an agricultural area. Now mom was a stay at home mom and dad worked in one of the few factories in this area. So they didn't do the traditional work in the Sycamore area.
00:02:06
Speaker
Sycamore, for its part, is a pretty small place. But it does have, ah today, around 19,500 people for
Maria's Disappearance and Search Efforts
00:02:16
Speaker
residents. Now, at the time this all happens, Maria is seven years old. According to the missing person's reports, at the time, she was just under four feet tall.
00:02:26
Speaker
She was 44 inches tall. She weighed around 53 pounds. She had brown hair and brown eyes. She was in the second grade and she was on the honor roll. She had also tends to happen when people put on rose colored glasses. She had perfect attendance for Sunday school. People said a lot of positive things about them, but I did note that mom says that she was kind of nervous and anxious and that if she got in any trouble, she would tend to overreact. So mom also said in a 1957 interview that someone would probably have to kill Maria to keep her quiet. And she stated that she had been the only one who was able to calm her down when Maria would have kind of a fear of the dark. She described her as being a little girl that was unafraid to scream. By all accounts, her best friend was an eight-year-old girl named Kathy Sigmund, who lived on the same street as Maria's family. She disappears on December 3rd of 1957, she's seven years old. So on the evening of December 3rd, Maria had wanted to go outside. It had started to snow in Sycamore. And after finishing dinner, Maria and Kathy
00:03:39
Speaker
They went outside at dark near Maria's house and they played a game that they called ducking the cars. They would run back and forth trying to avoid the headlights of oncoming cars. So they're on the side of the road, like around the houses, but they're avoiding the beams of light sort of coming at them. According to Kathy Sigmund, they were approached by a man and Kathy would later describe him to be in his early 20s. She said he was tall with a thin face and a slender chin, light colored hair, and a gap in his teeth. And she said that he was wearing a colorful sweater. The man had apparently told them his name was Johnny. And he had also told the girls that he was 24 years old and he wasn't married. He had asked them if they liked dolls and if they liked piggyback rides. And he had given Maria a piggyback ride. After this, she had gone back to her house and she got one of her dolls and brought it with her.
00:04:36
Speaker
So after Maria comes back with his doll, Kathy went to her house because she wanted to get her mittens and she left Maria and this man Johnny alone. When Kathy got back, Maria and the man were gone. So Kathy went to Maria's house and told her family that she couldn't find her. Initially, the family thought that Maria was hiding somewhere. So they sent Maria's 11-year-old brother out to look for her. He was unable to find her. And when he came back to the house, they decided it was time to call the police. Within an hour, police and it's quoted in these records as, quote, armed civilians, they began to search Sycamore.
00:05:19
Speaker
but they could not locate Maria and they did not find the man that Kathy had described and had known as Johnny. So the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they presumed that Maria might have been abducted across state lines. They arrived in Sycamore within two days to try and help the local and state police Search for Maria between them between the local police the Illinois State Police and the FBI They interviewed a number of witnesses who said that they had seen Maria and Kathy playing and that they didn't see any other person present between 6 and 6 30 p.m. And The police also talked to family members who had seen or spoken with Maria and Kathy during this time. They were interested in the times that the girls had returned to their house, and that would have been when Maria went to get her doll and Kathy had gone back to her house to get her mittens. They carefully interviewed both families about when Kathy had come to Maria's home to report to her family that she couldn't find her. Based on all of these interviews,
00:06:23
Speaker
They conclude that they believe that the man known as Johnny was thought to have approached the girls after 6.30 p.m. and the actual abduction would potentially have taken place between 6.45 and 7 p.m. So because Kathy is the only one who has seen this guy Johnny, she ends up being placed in protective custody.
00:06:47
Speaker
the police and apparently the FBI, they're worried that the kidnappers are gonna come back and try and take care of her, like harm her or abduct her or do something to get rid of the witness. I don't know how they arrive at that. I don't know if there's a lot of history of that, but the authorities have her look through photos of convicted felons and suspects who live locally who bear a resemblance to what she's described as, quote, Johnny. In late December, 1957,
00:07:14
Speaker
Kathy is taken to the Dane County Sheriff's Office in Madison, Wisconsin, and she looks at a lineup of possible suspects. She identifies a man named Thomas Joseph Rivard. Now, he's described in the FBI documents and the court documents here as a 35-year-old man who's five feet four inches tall, 156 pounds, with dark, blonde, wavy, or, quote, bushy hair. This man that she identifies as Johnny,
00:07:43
Speaker
Thomas Rivard, he has an alibi. He was in jail at the time of the kidnapping. Police suspected that someone else in the lineup here was the real culprit, and Rivard was someone that they had used to fill out the lineup. When asked years later about the 1957 lineup, Kathy will say that she does not remember picking out Thomas Rivard. So at this point, Maria's disappearance starts to receive national news coverage. And because she's a missing kid in the United States in the 50s, both President Dwight Eisenhower and FBI Director
Discovery of Maria's Remains
00:08:22
Speaker
J. Edgar Hoover, they take an interest in this case. Law enforcement continued to investigate various suspects in the area, including known transients and sex offenders and a local man who had allegedly on multiple occasions given children piggyback rides.
00:08:41
Speaker
They don't develop any real leads. So Maria's parents, they appear on television. Their photo shows up in magazines and newspapers. All the articles, all the coverage is them pleading for their daughter's safe return and asking for the public to help finding Maria. This goes on from December of 1957 until April of 1958. On April 26th of 1958,
00:09:09
Speaker
near Woodbine, Illinois, which Woodbine is an unincorporated community in a local township. It's in Illinois. It lies just east of where Elizabeth, Illinois is and a little west of Stockton, Illinois. There's not much there. Two tourists who are essentially what you and I refer to today as quote mushroom hunters. They're in a wooded area along U.S. Route 20 and they discover the skeletal remains of a small child who is wearing a shirt and undershirt and socks under a partially fallen tree. The body appears to have been here for several months because the decomposition is pretty far along. Based on dental records, this body is identified as Maria. They're able to use a lock of her hair and the shirt and the socks that are here compared to what the parents said she'd been wearing when she disappeared. This is her. The rest of Maria's clothing, including her coat, her slacks, her shoes, and an undergarment. The way it's described there, I think it's a single piece undergarment, but it would basically be her her bottom undergarment. They're never found. There's no photographs taken of the crime scene because the coroner at the time, a guy named James Furlong, he did not want someone in his organization or the police organizations to leak the photo of the child's body to the newspaper. Because the crime had occurred within Illinois rather than crossing state lines as they originally thought might be the case, the FBI is no longer involved in the case and they leave it to the Illinois State Police and the local police.
00:10:42
Speaker
An initial autopsy does not determine the cause of death because of the state of decomposition. There is an autopsy that will be done later, and that autopsy, which I think is done in the early 2000s, it's going to determine that Maria has likely been stabbed several times in the throat.
Suspects and Theories
00:11:01
Speaker
So let's move on to the suspects for a minute here and kind of talk about a couple of people.
00:11:06
Speaker
One of the early suspects is a guy named Jack McCullough. Jack McCullough was born John Cherry on November 27, 1939 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was born to a British sergeant and his wife. The sergeant, a guy named Samuel Cherry, he's going to be killed in World War II.
00:11:26
Speaker
and During the war, mom, who's known as Eileen Cherry, she's going to serve as one of the first female airplane spotters with the UK's Royal Air Force. ah She meets a guy named Ralph Tessier, and he was serving with the United States 8th Army Air Force at a Royal Air Force Base in England.
00:11:47
Speaker
She marries in November 1944, and after the war, ah she and her son, John Cherry, age seven, they follow Ralph to Sycamore, Illinois.
00:11:59
Speaker
Ralph and Eileen are going to have six more children together over the years, and after his mother's marriage, ah John eventually starts to use Ralph's last name, although he was sometimes called ah John Cherry. a Tessier Family Home was located around the corner from Maria's family home about two blocks away.
00:12:20
Speaker
We're going to come back to him in just a moment. There's another suspect named William Henry Redmond, and in 1997, a Sycamore police lieutenant named Patrick Soler, he closes out Maria's case, and he names William Henry Redmond, who was a former truck driver and a carnival worker from Nebraska who had died in 1992 as the man who had likely abducted and killed Maria.
00:12:46
Speaker
Now, William Henry Redmond had been charged in 1988 with a 1951 murder of an eight-year-old Pennsylvania girl. That case was dismissed because a police officer refused to reveal the name of a confidential informant in the Pennsylvania case.
00:13:05
Speaker
But he had also been the suspect in a 1951 disappearance of a 10-year-old named Beverly Potts in Ohio. According to Patrick Soler, William Redmond told a fellow inmate that he had committed a similar crime to Maria's abduction and murder. And Soler also believed that Redmond's general appearance and behavior at the time would have matched that of, quote, Johnny.
Case Reopening and New Allegations
00:13:31
Speaker
So according to this report, Patrick Soler believes that it can now be officially closed, but it gets criticized because they don't find a lot of supporting evidence and they don't they don't get past the fact that Soler appears to have some political motivations in all of this. Solar himself acknowledges that the evidence against William Redmond is pretty circumstantial and that if Redmond had lived, it might've been difficult to get a conviction in the in Maria's case unless they could get William Redmond to confess. So for that reason, Solar referred to Maria's case as closed but not solved, leading open the possibility that a better suspect might later be found. Okay. Have you,
00:14:19
Speaker
heard of this case before or any like any of the surrounding stuff related to this case. Of Maria? Yeah. Yes, I have. Because of things that have happened more recently, I've seen it like a mainstream media. Okay. This was an interesting case to me where it's a little different than the typical home for the holidays case, but it had a lot of what I would call modern technology about it that made a huge difference in how the case was looked at. Does that make sense? Then or later? Much later.
00:14:50
Speaker
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So I say all of that to say that the case was reopened in 2008. I just want to point out that Sycamore Police through Lieutenant Patrick Soler used the clothes but not solved. Yes. I'm just saying that I completely understand what he's saying there. That was one of the reasons like I ended up choosing this one for the pie. Well, it means that the case is no longer being worked on because where it stood at that point in time, they had the person who had done it. There was no way he was ever going to be held accountable for it. And so they didn't say it out loud, but there was not going to be any more work. done, right? Yes. So it could also be so he says closed but not solved. I could say, you know, possibly solved but not adjudicated. I'm not really privy to all the information he had, which would be a case where you're pretty sure of who did it. But he seems to pretty straightforward say, I'm not sure if this guy was alive, we'd even be able to make the case without a confession. So I can see where he would say closed but not solved.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, and he's saying that in the 90s, basically closing it out as a reason not to consider this case a cold case and keep investigating it. And that lasts for a while, whether it's accurate or not, it remains to be seen in terms of our story. But the case does end up being reopened in 2008. This is based on information from the Tessier family. One of the half sisters named Janet, she has information that Eileen Tessier passed on according to Janet, on her deathbed in January of 1994. What Janet tells Felice is that Eileen had said, those two little girls and the one that disappeared.
00:16:33
Speaker
John did it. John did it. And you have to tell someone. So Janet took the statement to me that her half brother, John Tessier, had kidnapped and murdered Maria. She also heard from her older sister, Catherine Tessier and Jean Tessier that Eileen had lied to investigators and said that he was home on the night of the crime. So that's a pretty big twist, don't you think? I mean, I guess. So going back to John Tessier for a minute,
00:17:04
Speaker
Their family home was about two blocks away from Maria's home. Ralph Tessier, he was a sign painter and he had painted insignias on the doors of the Sycamore police cars. He was very friendly with the police chief. When John Tessier was in the 10th grade, he was expelled from school for pushing a teacher and calling her a name. So at the time of Maria going missing,
00:17:31
Speaker
John Tessier would have been 18 years old and living at home with his parents and siblings. He had made plans that he was going to join the US Air Force. On December the 4th, investigators visited the Tessier home as part of their neighborhood search for Maria. According to the half sisters at the time, their mother told investigators that John Tessier had been home on the night of December the 3rd. This is later testified to as not being true.
00:18:01
Speaker
The FBI also investigated John as a possible suspect. Depending on who you ask, the investigation appears to have been triggered by a tip from a local resident or by John Tessier's parents trying to clear him because they realized that his general description and his name, Johnny, would match who authorities were looking for related to Maria.
00:18:33
Speaker
Right, and he lived on the same street, right? Is that correct? Two blocks away, yeah. Okay, so I would say that that would in and of itself be enough for consideration. While it seems like, I actually don't know. I don't know if people think that these types of heinous crimes ran rampant during this period of time, which would have been in the 50s. But this was actually a very, very rare thing for a young girl to go missing like this and then be found dead, right? It is. And they they would have pulled out all the stops with regard to the fact. I'm just saying I don't know how much it would have mattered who gave a tip or who said what. ah Johnny two blocks away would have been considered. Right.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, he would have been considered this case in terms of John Tessier. It kind of ends there. He has what we're going to find out later. There are explanations for what's going on. It's difficult to know what the real story is, but it's ultimately going to be a part of what we're telling. But I don't know that we have to put a lot of stock into what happened at the time until kind of later in the story.
00:19:42
Speaker
Now, we fast forward again back to 2008. Another one of Tessier's half sisters, in this instance, Mary Pat Tessier. So she was also present when Eileen had spoken to Janet. but She later on is going to testify that she didn't say everything Janet said. Eileen just said, quote, he did it.
00:20:08
Speaker
Nevertheless, Mary Pat is going to testify that she understood it the same way that Janet and the other sisters had. And that was that John had been suspected by them of being part of this murder for years.
00:20:23
Speaker
At the time, a doctor described Eileen, who was a cancer patient and on morphine, as being disoriented. John Tessier once threatened to kill Janet with a gun, and it was alleged that he had sexually molested his half-sister Jean when she was a minor. He was not a part of the Tessier family at the time of Eileen's death, and the family made it clear that he was not welcome to attend her funeral. So Janet says that she made several fruitless attempts over the the next 14 years or so to get law enforcement involved, particularly the Sycamore Police and the FBI. She wanted them to look into her mother's statement and what it meant. Patrick Soler, who for part of this time was a lieutenant with the Sycamore Police,
00:21:10
Speaker
the one who had identified William Henry Redmond as the most likely suspect in Maria's murder, he goes on and he tells the national news, specifically CNN at one point, that he had never talked to Janet, but that he would not have suspected John because he knew the Tessier family.
Investigation into John Tessier
00:21:29
Speaker
And because of the connections of Ralph Tessier to the police department, he would not have have looked at him much further.
00:21:37
Speaker
He specifically said that in 1957, John Tessier had been cleared by the FBI's investigation. That's what I was going to say when you said you didn't know how much stock to put into it. I was going to say, well, they didn't arrest him at the time. Right. So in 2008, Janet emails the Illinois State Police tip lock, and this results in the state police cold case unit looking deep into John Tessier. Now they come and talk to all of the sisters and Catherine and Jean, they tell the sisters of their suspicions as well. Jean said that John had touched her as a child. She describes this as a molestation. She also describes incidents where he allegedly
00:22:20
Speaker
molested other young girls. Another woman in the course of this investigation, she alleges that John Tessier had given her a piggyback ride as a child and refused to put her down until her father had intervened and told John to leave her alone. So state police investigators, they review the evidence and they develop a new timeline under which Tessier could have kidnapped Maria. This all kind of rests a little bit on this on a phone call that's made.
00:22:49
Speaker
Going back to John Tessier for a minute, the way that his story went down with his parents and the FBI investigators, they say that he was in Rockford, Illinois on December the 3rd, which is about 40 miles northwest of Sycamore. They said that he had been in Chicago on December 2nd and 3rd undergoing the military entrance processing exams. So those are the physical examinations part.
00:23:12
Speaker
of leaving for the service. They're required for enlistment into all of the services. On the morning of December the 3rd, he had visited the Chicago recruiting station and then spent the day sightseeing in Chicago before returning that night to Rockford, Illinois by train. He would have arrived there at 6.45 p.m.
00:23:32
Speaker
Upon his arrival in Rockford, Illinois, he had called his parents to ask for a ride home to Sycamore since he had taken the train to and from Chicago and left his own car at home. Telephone records would indicate that a collect call was placed from the Rockford, Illinois post office to the Tessier home at 6.57 PM that evening by someone who gave his name as written down by an operator as John Tessier. After making, they have a misspelling in there, too. I don't know if you caught that. It almost looks like Tassier. Well, dude's got like four names, so... Yeah, he does end up with a lot of names. So after making this call, Tessie had met with officers from the Rockford recruiting station and dropped off paper related to his enlistment. The officers were able to confirm that they had spoken with John around 7.15 p.m. that evening. One officer had expressed some concerns about Tessie's credibility and conduct. So he ends up being brought to the police station to take a lie detector test. He passes the lie detector test. So that's the reason that the FBI has taken him off, like because of his alibi and passing this polygraph, they take him off the list and close it out. And they note no further investigation is being conducted regarding the above suspect.
00:24:50
Speaker
talking about John. So Kathy Sigmund never sees a photograph of him because he's never asked to identify him. The next day he leaves Sycamore and he reports the basic training at Lackland Air Force Base. So we're going to talk about what he does in this time period for a minute because it's important. John Tessier serves in the U.S. military for 13 years. He ends up leaving the service with the rank of captain.
00:25:16
Speaker
When he leaves, he moves to Seattle, Washington. He ends up graduating in June of 1974 from the King County Law Enforcement Academy. So he becomes a police chief in the small town of Lacey, Washington, which is a really little town. I think today it's more of a suburb of Olympia. It's got a population of about 50,000 people.
00:25:40
Speaker
but at the time it didn't have nearly as many. He would move from there to the police department in Milton, Washington, and that's a much smaller place, about 7,000 people at the time. He frequently clashed with the chief of police, and the chief of police documented a long list of complaints about John, about his work, about his work but its conduct at work, and he attempts to fire him. But in 1982, in Tacoma, Washington, John lets a 15-year-old runaway and her friend who knows that he's a police officer move in with him. This 15 year old is later going to testify that while she's living with John, he had molested her and on a couple of occasions he had performed sex
Jack McCullough's Arrest and Trial
00:26:24
Speaker
acts on her. Tassier ends up being charged with statutory rape.
00:26:27
Speaker
They go through plea negotiations between the prosecutor and his attorneys, and he ends up pleading guilty to communication with a minor for immoral purposes. So this is a misdemeanor, but it leads to him having to serve a year of formal probation, and he ends up being terminated from the Milton Police Department on March 10th of 1982. Twelve years later,
00:26:51
Speaker
on April 27, 1994, John Tessier is legally going to change his name to Jack Daniel McCullough. He says that he does this because he wants to honor his late mom. By 2011, Jack McCullough is in his early seventies and living in a retirement community in Northwest Seattle where he works as a security guard. So that kind of catches us up to the timeline. After this 2008 tip, we catch up with him in 2011 while this investigation by the Illinois state police is ongoing. Now he's changed his name. He's lived a whole life in the time that's passed since Maria's murder. Police take five pictures out of the 1957 Sycamore High School yearbook and they're hoping that they're going to do a photographic lineup with Kathy, Maria's friend. But John's picture is not in this yearbook because he had been expelled. They eventually find a photo of him from the time from a former girlfriend.
00:27:56
Speaker
It's slightly different than the yearbook photos in that John Tassier is wearing an open collar shirt rather than a suit and the background of his picture was dark rather than the light and well lit background of the Sycamore High School yearbook photos. So Kathy picks them out because the picture is different.
00:28:17
Speaker
Along with this picture, Tessier's former girlfriend, she provided an unused military issue train ticket from Rockford, Illinois to Chicago that was dated December 1957. So the the state police looking at this say that this contradicts Tessier's alibi. They believe that John did not take the train on his trip to Chicago and had instead potentially driven his car there.
00:28:45
Speaker
That means that he could have driven back to Sycamore the afternoon of December the 3rd, kidnapped Maria, and then driven on to Rockford, Illinois. The police located a high school friend of John Tessier who recalled seeing John's distinctively painted car in Sycamore the afternoon of Maria's disappearance. And that friend said that John never let anyone else drive his car.
00:29:11
Speaker
Are you following me with all this so far? It's pretty confusing and there's a lot of elements here. I am. It sounds to me like, well, I guess there could be some stuff, but for the most part, like most of this information would have been available at the time of the crime or shortly thereafter, no? Yeah, I think so. Okay.
00:29:29
Speaker
In July 2011, the Seattle Police Department, there are going to help the Illinois State Police in this investigation. And they bring in John Tessier, now known as Jack McCullough. So I'm going to call him Jack McCullough till the end of this. They bring him in for questioning. And they use a professional interrogator in this setting, primarily because Jack has been a law enforcement officer. At first,
00:29:53
Speaker
Jack is calm and cooperative, but when they start questioning him about Maria's murder and his whereabouts on the night of the crime, he becomes evasive and aggressive. So he stops answering questions at this point and refuses to participate any further. So he ends up being arrested for Maria's kidnapping and murder. And then he's extradited to Illinois that same month in July, 2011, Maria's body is exhumed.
00:30:21
Speaker
and reexamine to check for DNA evidence, but they don't find any. However, this is where they do a second autopsy, and they find that Maria had been stabbed in the throat. They believe it was at least three times by a long, sharp blade, and they do this with a forensic anthropologist pointing out Nixon or Sternum and her neck vertebrate.
00:30:43
Speaker
and it seems to be consistent with at least three slashes to her throat. So even though stabbing is considered the likely cause of death, later on, an appellate court is going to state that the findings don't preclude other possible causes of death, including ligature strangulation. This couldn't be adequately investigated because of the decomposition of her soft tissue.
00:31:09
Speaker
News of this arrest and the 54-year-old murder case draws national attention. So Clay Campbell, who's the DeKalb County State's attorney, he's a little reluctant to take on the case because of his age and the lack of any physical evidence that would connect Jack McCullough, formerly John Tessier, to this crime. But he's persuaded by Maria's family and by John Tessier's family They all believe that Jack McCullough is guilty of this. So he formally charges Jack McCullough with his kidnapping and murder in September of 2012.
00:31:45
Speaker
The case goes on trial. The prosecution contends that Jack McCullough was attracted to Maria, then decided to kidnap her, but instead ended up killing her. They present the new autopsy reports that suggest that Maria was stabbed. So the prosecutors suspect that Jack had molested Maria. They're unable to prove it. They never bring this up in court. Numerous witnesses testify for the prosecution, including Maria's family members,
00:32:14
Speaker
multiple neighbors, law enforcement personnel, and Kathy, Maria's best friend. She's the star witness and she ultimately identifies Jack McCullough as Johnny, the man who had walked up to her and Maria 50 years earlier. Another childhood friend of Maria's testified that she had also been offered a piggyback ride from quote, Johnny, and she identifies him as being Jack McCullough.
00:32:42
Speaker
Three inmates who were jailed with Jack McCullough at the time, they come in and testify as jailhouse informants that he talked about killing Maria. However, the stories were fairly inconsistent. They also failed to match the evidence that indicated that Maria had been stabbed. One inmate said that Jack McCullough spoke of strangling Maria with a wire.
Controversies and Appeals
00:33:02
Speaker
Another said that Jack had accidentally smothered her to death to stop her from screaming. So the the defense puts on their case, they argue that prosecutors and police have been pressured by Maria's family and by John Tessier's family to solve this case and implicate him. Although there's no physical evidence, no motive, and no indication that John or Jack would have been in the area where Maria had been kidnapped,
00:33:29
Speaker
for his part mccullough does not take the stand in his own defense on the advice of his attorney. On September 14th of 2012, Jack McCullough is convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Maria. He receives a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 20 years. He's 73 years old at the time of the sentencing.
00:33:50
Speaker
so That could be where our story ends. This is a really old case. There's a lot to get us here. What do you think of all that happening? I remember this happening actually, which is what I was talking about. Like I was familiar with the case in real time now because the trial happened in 2012, right? Is that right? Yeah. Okay.
00:34:10
Speaker
So this brings up a couple of interesting things. So for one thing, I feel like somebody got a couple of things confused in the premise of what was happening here. We've all heard of like deathbed confessions, right? Yes. Now, a deathbed confession is when you confess to a crime you committed. Yeah, it's a statement against interests of your, it's your own crime.
00:34:38
Speaker
Right. Okay. And so there was sort of a half-ish statement here that was interpreted that someone else had committed this heinous crime, right? Yeah. In this particular case. Now, do you think it do you think it becomes a confession because she had covered for her son? She's confessing to having done that or no? I don't because she doesn't specifically indicate who he is or who she's talking about. and with regard to what he did, right? There's no specification there. I honestly, I don't i feel like the reason she was ignored for 14 years or whatever is because there was no merit to what she was saying. I feel like the law enforcement officers who said, yeah, okay, so your mom made the statement because you have to consider the implications. We're talking about, what, 40 years after the crime? about Because she died in 94. It's a long time later. And right she has had all this time to come forward to make the case, whatever the reason she has not done so.
00:35:53
Speaker
I don't consider what was being said valid like it should be used as evidence. His family did not care for him. It's clear. He he may not be a very good dude. Yeah, that that's what I was going to say. Like this one, I have mixed feelings about this particular case, which is why it's towards the end of everything. I find it to be a super interesting case, but like even independently of all the things that you can read about this, I find that like he might have been bad.
00:36:22
Speaker
He might've been bad, yes, he might've been bad. However, he was nonetheless cleared at the time of the crime. He was, and I'm not... He was brought forward, I think, solely because his sister who was told this information by the mom finally got somebody to listen to her, okay? Yeah. It is never a bad career move to solve a case that's this old. No, and it's and it's ah a case that got national attention. There's a lot of public interest in this case, so...
00:36:53
Speaker
And there may have been some either warranted or unwarranted animosity brewing between the siblings, right? Right. It's pretty clear to me that, let's see, what did he change his name to, Jack? Jack McCullough. Jack McCullough, also known as John Tessier, also known as John Cherry, he had changed his name and moved away. And it they make it sound like it's suspicious, but this was already in the works, right? Yes. Before Maria ever, because you don't just leave the next day for training. Now, is that convenient? Well, sure, it's convenient.
00:37:32
Speaker
You can make this case. However, they didn't make the case at the time of the crime. I don't find the mother's deathbed confession credible to the extent that it would override the investigation that was done at the time of the crime. They could reconsider the fact that this is a kid named Johnny who lived close by where the victim lived and was considered at the time of the crime. But I also think that they bring the 1982, like, canoodling with a minor charge. I feel like they consider that. I know. And we get in a very difficult position if we try and differentiate that. But I will say that, like, unless you're talking about full-on crimes of opportunity, those things are so far apart. Living with someone and that you, first of all, shouldn't be living with um and you engage in abuse of them, it's one thing.
00:38:29
Speaker
It's very different from that to taking a child and then abusing that child and assaulting that child to the point that you kill them. That's a very different scenario and a very different type of predator, 99% of the time.
00:38:43
Speaker
Right. and it's And I feel like that was one of the driving forces that was used to give credence to the mother's just bed exclamation that he did it. Those two girls, the one that disappeared, he did it, right? Yeah.
00:39:00
Speaker
but All this works together. Is it evidence? Well, I mean, it could be, but not in and of itself. There's a reason it was largely ignored. It's not a full-on—well, it's not a confession at all, except if she consciously knew about it and was covering it up, I guess that could be her confession.
00:39:22
Speaker
It still doesn't get it past the hearsay exceptions you can use. It's not really an excited utterance, which typically happens like in the heat of the moment right after a crime. That would be if he died and he was like, I killed her. Right, right. He didn't make the confession. She had made this statement and he has no way to confront her, which is one of the things that's guaranteed to defendants.
00:39:42
Speaker
let Let's talk about that for a second. So he appeals this life sentence. And then February 13, 2015, so this trial is happening in 2012. And basically two and a half years later, it's made its way in front of the Second District Illinois appellate court. At the time, they uphold his murder conviction.
00:40:00
Speaker
But they start peeling the case apart. They vacate convictions for kidnapping and abduction because the way that the statute of limitations would have been in place in 1957 when the crime occurred, those are going to be outside the three-year statute of limitation. So that decision itself, it really doesn't have an effect on the fact that McCulloch is serving a life sentence. So the sentencing court had provided that the sentences for kidnapping and abduction just merged into the life sentence for murder. And the appellate court rules that Eileen Tessier's deathbed statement, would' it should not have been admitted as evidence against Jack McCullough.
00:40:41
Speaker
But the court declined to overturn the murder conviction at the time because they did not feel like the judge in the case, the court, had heavily relied upon this statement in finding for a conviction.
00:40:54
Speaker
I would have loved to have known what he relied upon then. Well, there's a lot of testimony from different people, and I think that you have to look at that, was he there at all? With that type of physical evidence where you've got this unused train ticket, I personally find it unreliable, but I could see how a judge might find that more reliable.
00:41:13
Speaker
Well, and he didn't testify, right? So there was no explanation for it. Right. I would say, I just want to say at the, like, just because of sort of the nature of this case, there was a lot of testimony, but the underlying concept that I think this case really illustrates perfectly is the age of this case and a certain amount of confirmation bias being sought by some of the witnesses
00:41:45
Speaker
as opposed to like they want they basically wanted to solve the case not necessarily it wasn't I don't think everybody had a vendetta against this guy and I can't say that all the vendettas against this guy are completely without merit like I you shouldn't go this way though no they shouldn't go this way and i'll say this and i'm gonna i'm gonna state this and probably eat it later but i can't figure out the scattershot approach that janet took because she expands on eileen's statement to the point that she includes
00:42:17
Speaker
three different girls and That sent me down this crazy rabbit hole with this case where I was like who else are we talking about here? Where he should have been looked at for these other cases and that made me wonder Like were they just throwing out everything that was close by in an effort to try and get him on something because they hated him so badly or was there something to this where they knew he had done something but they didn't know what it was and that big that worked against this whole case ultimately, and you know the appellate court does rule that like using that statement shouldn't have happened, but they don't feel like it really affected the case. That threw me off,
Declaration of Innocence
00:42:59
Speaker
because I feel like it did affect the case. Well, I don't see how, and I don't even see how this comes up without his sister making this declaration that the mom made, right? Right. None of this comes up. The investigators don't go back to him as a suspect without it.
00:43:14
Speaker
It does not happen. And I'm telling you, regardless of what is said, the convictions with ah regard, and I'm not trying to minimize that, I'm just saying it didn't have anything to do with whether he would be more or less culpable for the murder of Maria.
00:43:30
Speaker
with regard to the charges he faced with the 15-year-old girl that moved in with him, right? Yeah. But I'm saying that that is what drove this whole scenario, because they were like, the mom said it like she'd been hiding it. And then they were like, oh, look, he committed another sex crime, right? Yeah. OK. And I'm just saying,
00:43:52
Speaker
I mean, it's terrible that he did that. I'm just saying it should not have been a driving force here, but it's neither here nor there now. Yeah. So, OK, let's let's talk about what happens next. McCulloch Prose in 2015, he files a petition for post conviction relief.
00:44:11
Speaker
He wants his murder conviction to also be set aside and the courts look at it and they dismiss it as frivolous and without merit. But the person who is a public defender who had originally represented Jack McCullough at trial, they had been continuing to investigate this case to figure out what had happened here. They had stayed in touch with Jack McCullough, and despite the fact that he's no longer appointed to defend Jack McCullough in court, he does file a motion to reconsider the dismissal of Jack McCullough's pro se petition for post-conviction relief.
00:44:45
Speaker
Now, McCullough files a successive motion that could not be denied without a hearing from the state's attorney's office. I've seen how they do this, but I don't totally understand what is happening because I've never seen it. I think it's unique to Illinois in response to these motions.
00:45:03
Speaker
Now, Clay Campbell is gone. He's no longer the prosecutor for DeKalb County. He's been replaced by a guy named Richard Schmock. Richard Schmock, he's in the position of being basically the district attorney of DeKalb County. They call him state's attorney, same thing. But he does conduct a fairly extensive review of the evidence. And in Richard Schmock's opinion, he concludes that Jack McCullough, regardless of what people think about him, he couldn't have committed this particular crime. And his opinion was that he was actually innocent. According to Schmock, Evidence that was kept out of the trial clearly established Jack McCullough's whereabouts on the evening that Maria had been abducted and murdered. In his opinion, it supported his alibi. In particular, he pointed out that Illinois Bell phone records, they showed that Jack McCullough had actually made a collect phone call as John Tessier to his mother that evening from a pay phone in downtown Rockford rather than from Sycamore. That was the allegation at trial. Given the timing of this telephone call, the 40 mile distance between Sycamore and Rockford, icy road conditions that night, Mock says that McCulloch could not possibly have been in two places at one time. He did not believe that he could have been in Sycamore at the time that Maria disappeared. So finally in March of 2016, we get a new court hearing. And on April 15th of 2016, Illinois Circuit Court judge named William P. Brady, he vacates Jack McCullough's original conviction and his sentence, and he orders a new trial. So Jack McCullough is still charged with his crime, but he's released on bond that day pending this new trial. A week later, Judge Brady ends up dismissing the charges against Jack McCullough. The dismissal of this murder charge was without prejudice. That meant that if new evidence came up, Jack McCullough could be tried again for the murder of Maria. They just have to have a prosecutor that wants to do so. So Charles, Maria's brother, he He makes a request at that time where he has this petition that allegedly had hundreds of Sycamore citizens' signatures on it, including the city's mayor, that Judge Brady should appoint a special prosecutor to replace Richard Schmock because of a conflict of interest on Jack
Concluding Thoughts and Ramifications
00:47:20
Speaker
McCall's case. Judge Brady, he postpones this ruling. And a little later on in August of 2016, he denies the motion for a special prosecutor and Charles, Maria's brother, does not appeal that ruling to a higher court. So April 12th of 2017, Jack McCullough, formerly John Cherry and John Tessier, he is declared actually innocent of this crime by the DeKalb County Circuit Court. A lot going on there. All right, so there's things that happen afterwards. July of 2016, Porter, he is one of Jack McCullough's son-in-laws. He files a lawsuit against the state police in the Sycamore Police Department for refusal to comply with a FOIA request related to trying to investigate this case.
00:48:05
Speaker
The FOIA request, it's prompted in November of 2015 by Schmock saying that he felt like the police had done something wrong here. And like some way, shape or fashion, they had kind of squashed some of the evidence that the FBI had originally used. this comes up a couple of different times in relation to other disappearances. I don't think I want to get into them like in this particular episode, but let me ask you this. I think there's no way that John Tessier, Jack McCullough has anything to do with Maria's
00:48:41
Speaker
disappearance and murder. Does that line up with what you're thinking? I think that that's what the evidence shows. Yeah. Based on specifically what ends up being overturned, right? Now, granted, look at how long it took to get there, right? Yeah. I mean, the initial, so, okay, this is a very old case. It's a very heinous crime. A little girl disappears and then she's found dead. There are attributes of the defendant here.
00:49:06
Speaker
that would make him suspect, right? yeah His name, for example. But even though those are all that's happening, he's not charged at the time. And there's really no evidence. In fact, all the evidence suggests otherwise, right? That's why he's not charged. Yeah.
00:49:25
Speaker
It's not a case where like he was just flat out ignored. I think that the wrong motivation was used here to bring it back up all these years later. I think that was a problem with it too. And they've damaged this case just like I'm throwing this out there and I hate to say this. They damage this case when they we do this because anybody that comes up now there's a level of reasonable doubt related to it. Well, right. And so it shouldn't have had that, right? The resources have been expended and wasted. And I feel like it needed more. I feel like it shouldn't have come back. I i just I don't see how in good conscience somebody took the information that's been presented and said, let's run with this. Now, I remember him being convicted. Yeah.
00:50:15
Speaker
I also remember there was information that contradicted what finally got his conviction overturned that was presented as factual, right? Like in in the course of convicting him, if you had watched what was going on in mainstream media, there was this roller coaster ride that ended with you saying, oh, good, they got the bad guy, right? Yeah.
00:50:43
Speaker
And so, like, for example, i and I don't remember everything, but I know that the phone records alleging the call, I think they were said to have not existed. I'm talking about during the trial, not the appeal, right? Yeah, that's part of the, yeah.
00:50:59
Speaker
Okay, and so I remember thinking the presumption there would have to be like you just can't assume, like you can't assume he's lying about the phone call just because the records no longer exist, right? I think the way it turned out was the prosecutor believed, and if I get this wrong, I apologize, people can read me later, but this is this is what I'm inferring by some of the motions that are filed in this case and some of the requests that are filed.
00:51:26
Speaker
The prosecutor believed that a single page of the phone records had been kept by the police to verify the FBI's assertion that this guy couldn't have done it because of this. So they had it, and they had a record of an operator writing down the wrong name, Tassier, T-A-S-S-I-E-R, and that existed. But the police refused to turn it over at the time of this trial many, many, many years later, saying they didn't have to.
00:51:52
Speaker
Well, right. And the point being that I have a feeling all of that was taken into consideration around the time of the crime when they were investigating it, and that he was probably cleared, rightfully so, because there wasn't enough.
00:52:09
Speaker
Right. I don't think this guy did it. At some point in season six, we're going to talk about this case again, in relation to other cases. I don't think that this guy had ultimately anything to do with it, meaning Jack McCullough. Right. And so to me, it's very interesting because and so this is a very old case, but in my lifetime, I watched somebody get convincingly convicted. Okay. So when I was watching this back in the day, whenever it was on, and when I say mainstream media, I mean, it was on like the true crime shows. right? Yes. Because this was an old case to be being solved. There was no DNA evidence that led to this. It was all about, you you know, the family testifying and them reinventing the timeline. But what I'm saying is they had what on its face appeared to be corroborating evidence. And I'm talking about like at the time of the trial when he was convicted. Right.
00:53:04
Speaker
Well, to find out like all of that was bunk, essentially, right? Yeah. It was really hard to swallow that because it in mainstream media. Now granted, I didn't investigate this case to come, like i we're just covering it now. And I've accepted the fact that like he was convicted and then basically found to be actually innocent and exonerated, right? Yeah. It's one of those rare cases though, where it unfolded right before us. it It did. There are still people who believe he's guilty, right? Yeah. Because he was convicted of it. and I feel like
00:53:44
Speaker
This had a lot of unintended repercussions that with people not thinking it all the way through. I mean, in any given case, would you consider evidence like what, regardless of what anybody says, started the re-investigation? I don't feel like that should be considered unless at the time of the crime, nobody had ever thought of this guy. Yeah.
00:54:09
Speaker
That is, the I think, the only reason I'd be like, oh, his mom said that he did it and his sister interpreted it this way. Well, let's have a look, right? yeah But it wouldn't have led here, I don't think. And so I think it was just, ah now granted, it is a strong desire to solve this yeah this little girl's murder. But at the same time, it put an innocent, it upturned,
00:54:35
Speaker
you know, the victim's family, the the defendant who had to defend himself, he went to jail, I mean, for no reason, right? Yeah. Well, I don't have anything else on this one. This one is sort of a miserable case all all all around. And I will say, this I did not know this before I engaged in trying to figure this case out. This was confusing because when you try and look for John Tessier versus ah Jack McCullough,
00:55:02
Speaker
It's almost like you've got two different people living very different lives. Well, right. But see, they use that as home, like trying to change his identity. He had a falling out with his family. No question, right? Yeah. McCulloch was his mother's maiden name.
00:55:19
Speaker
And that's why he ends up with the name. So he was young. He was really young when the crime happened. And I could see where he, being named John, Johnny, at the time of the, you know, when a little girl that lived two blocks away was taken by somebody who introduced himself as Johnny, it would have a stigma with it. He would not necessarily have to be guilty to not want to have that name any longer, right? Yeah.
00:55:44
Speaker
Not to mention the fact that I don't know what transpired. like I don't know if his sister like called him up and said, mom's confessed that you did it. like I don't know what was going on. We have no idea what he was facing, but I feel like it would have been picked up on. by I guarantee you that this case, the the murder of Maria yeah was probably the most investigated case by all the agencies involved in the investigation at the time of the crime, right? yeah And so if there had been a way at the time of the crime to implicate him, I think it would have happened. Nobody was going to let the guy who killed this little girl get away with it.
00:56:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I will say, if you want to read more about this, one of the people that was not going to let this guy get away with it is CNN's Anne O'Neill. She has a massive John Tessier, Jack McCullough. It's called the oldest cold case and it's multi-part. I think it's listed as taken the coldest case ever solved. And unfortunately, it's invalidated by these court rulings, but it is a fascinating way to dive down this rabbit hole if you want to go and read more about it.
00:56:56
Speaker
It was one of those things that like if I didn't know better, it might have given me more questions like about, like are we you know saying the right things here? and like I could certainly find myself in a position where somebody brought me evidence and said, no, you really did it. I have an opinion on who did it. and like i don't you know It's not part of this episode because we're focusing in on the John Cherry side of it, John Tessier side of it, Jack McCullough. I felt like that was complex enough. but Sure, but he has been exonerated and you can... He is found factually innocent, yeah. Everybody can make their own decision about whether that was the right call or not. Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
00:59:16
Speaker
I'll be singing, you'll be making plans
00:59:39
Speaker
One day it will be my baby and me
01:00:32
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:00:54
Speaker
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