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The Mystery of Maria · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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Dispression. December nineteen fifty seven, two seven year old girls were outside in
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the neighborhood streets of Sycamore, Illinois, playing in the newly fallen snow.
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They were best friends, Kathy Sigmund and Maria Ridolph, but witnesses also placed
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a third, rather unusual playmate with the two girls that wintery evening. According
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to Kathy and other witnesses who saw the third mysterious figure, the girls were
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already outside playing when a young man, maybe in his early twenties approached them.
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Despite the age gap, the three of them became fast friends, especially
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when this young man, who introduced himself as Johnny, offered to give the
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girls piggyback rides. At some point during the evening, Maria, an honor
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student in the second grade, was excited about this new friend, so she
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wanted to rush home and grab one of her favorite toys so that she could
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show it to him. Maria came back toy in hand, but by then
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it had started snowing again and her best friend Kathy was getting cold. This
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time, it was Kathy who left Maria alone with Johnny so that she could
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go home and get her mittens. When she came back, everything was completely
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different. The streets were empty, and both Maria and Johnny were gone.
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Walked over to Maria's house to try to find her friend, but Maria wasn't
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there either. Not thinking that anything bad had actually happened at the time,
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Maria's parents first sent out her eleven year old brother to go and look for
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her, but when he came back empty handed, a full blown manhunt was
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soon underway. Her friend's family and the police scoured the neighborhood, but there
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was a pit in Maria's mother's stomach. She later said, quote, my
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daughter was a nervous girl and if she got in any trouble would become hysterical.
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I'm the only one who would calm her down. Maria was also described
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as a screamer who was easily agitated. The canvas of the neighborhood came back
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with nothing, and, now fearing that Maria had been kidnapped and potentially taken
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across state lines, the FBI joined the search. Cathy described her new friend
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Johnny as a young man with his slender chin, light hair, gap in
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his teeth, and was wearing a very colorful sweater. Fearing that Johnny would
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come back to attack the key witness against him, the FBI put Kathy and
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her family in a safe house. They also tightened the timeline for Maria's possible
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abduction even further. Witnesses had seen the girls playing alone between six and six
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thirty that evening, and going off the family's testimonies from when both Kathy and
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Maria stopped buy their respective homes, Johnny must have approached them after six thirty.
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This gave a window of about fifteen minutes for Maria to disappear into thin
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air, and it looked like that's exactly what had happened. On April twenty
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sixth, nineteen fifty eight, about five months after that fateful night, two
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tourists found the skeletal remains of a child near Woodbine, Illinois. She was
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too badly decomposed to identify right away, and it was a combination of her
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dental records, hair samples, and her clothing that led investigators to believe that
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they had finally found Maria. She was wearing only her shirt, vest and
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socks, with the rest of her clothes missing. Due to the terrible condition
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of her remains, the coroner couldn't determine the cause of death or if any
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sexual abuse had occurred. Realizing now that whatever happened to Maria hadn't happened to
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cross stated lines, the FBI withdrew, but not without naming a few suspects.
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First amongst those was a neighborhood teenager called John Tessier. John Tessier had
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actually been born John Cherry in nineteen thirty nine in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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His father was a British sergeant in World War Two and was unfortunately killed during
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the early fighting of the war. His mother, Eileen mc culluoff, was
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one of the first female plain spotters in the RAF, which is how after
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the death of her first husband, she met a member of the American Air
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Force called Ralph Tessier. Eileen and Ralph married four years later, and at
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the end of the war, Eileen and John moved with Ralph to Sycamore,
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Illinois, where the family would grow even more together. Eileen and Ralph had
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six more children, and Ralph officially adopted John, making John Cherry now John
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Tessier. The Tessier house in Sycamore was just around the corner from the Ridolph
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family home, and if John having the same name as the mysterious Johnny the
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girls had been playing with that evening wasn't enough to make authority suspicious. It
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turned out that John already had a bit of a troubled past. When John
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was in the tenth grade, he was expelled from school after an incident where
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he allegedly pushed the teacher and called her an insulting name. At the time
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of Maria's disappearance, he was eighteen years old, and it wasn't too long
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after that that there were rumors of more allegations of him threatening to kill one
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of his sisters and sexually abusing another. It looked like John was the perfect
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suspec and the disappearance of Maria, So how come Kathy was never asked anything
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about him? Why didn't they even show him in a lineup? When the
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police interviewed John and his family in their initial canvas of the neighborhood, John
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and his mother Eileen, told them that he had been home all evening,
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But when the FBI conducted their own interviews only a few days later, that
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story changed. Now John had spent the evening of Maria's disappearance in Rockford,
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Illinois, where he had been doing physical examinations to enlist in the Air Force,
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and he had phone records showing him calling from Rockford and trained tickets to
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prove it. This time, it was his stepfather, Ralph, who confirmed
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John's alibi. At the time, Ralph was a man of good standing with
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the Sycamore Police. He was the one who painted the local police cars and
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he stood up for his step son and they believed him, but the FBI
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were still unconvinced. They asked John to come in for a lie detector test
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and it was only when John passed it that they officially removed him from the
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list of suspects. Cathy was never even shown a picture of John, and
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he left for the Air Force the very next day after his final interview with
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authorities. Thirteen years went by and Maria's case was nowhere nearer to being solved.
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John became a captain before retiring from the Air Force and then moved to
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Seattle, Washington, where he became a policeman. For years, John and
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his chief of police had argument after argument, and his boss tried to get
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him fired on several occasions. He cited a long list of complaints that he
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had about John and his work in general, but John always managed to wiggle
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out of the news at the last moment. It was only in nineteen eighty
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two that John would do something that he couldn't quite come back from, and
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it was unfortunately quite a big one. John and his then girlfriend took in
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a fifteen year old runaway named Michelle Wineman. Michell knew John was a police
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officer and trusted him enough to live with him while she had nowhere else to
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go, but she later said that everything changed only a few short days after
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she'd moved in. Michelle later testified that John had sexually abused her. Now
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John's chief of police had exactly what he needed to get him out of his
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department and behind bars, but John somehow managed to get out of it again.
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He'd been charged with statutory rape, which is a felony and should have
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resulted in jail time, but he and his lawyers managed to work out a
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deal where John pled guilty to communication with the minor for immoral purposes. That
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dropped him all the way down to a misdemeanor, and he was sentenced to
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one year probation and fired from the police. That was it. He later
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found work as a security guard and changed his name to Jack Daniel McCullough in
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honor of his mother, whose maiden name had been McCullough. This came right
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at the top of his mother, Eileen's long and traumatic death cancer and had
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been taking very powerful painkillers when she made a startling deathbed confession to her two
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daughters. Quote those two little girls and the one that disappeared. John did
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it. John did it, and you have to tell someone. That's what
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Eileen reportedly told Janet and Mary Patt, two of John's half sisters. According
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to her daughters, Eileen was admitting to covering up John's alleged crimes, and
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now she wanted something to be done about it. She apparently made Janet promise
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to take what she now knows to the authorities. John was asked not to
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come to his mother's funeral. Janet, who was the sister that John reportedly
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once threatened to kill, spent the next fourteen years trying to get law enforcement
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to reopen Maria's case, and finally, in two thousand and eight, she
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got what she wanted with news about Eileen's deathbed confession. The investigation was back
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on, with Janet leading the siblings who had their own sides to die tell
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as well. Two of the older sisters, Catherine and Jean, testified that
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their mother had lied to investigators about John's whereabouts that evening, and Jean had
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a little bit more to share about John. Jeane was the sister who claimed
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that John had sexually abused her as a miner, and said that he had
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done that same thing to other young girls as well. This was a potential
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motive, especially seeing as Maria had been missing a lot of her clothes when
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she had been found. Add that to Maria's mother's testimony of Maria being someone
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who screamed when she was frightened, and the motive for murder becomes even stronger.
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But Eileen had been incredibly sick and delirious when she'd confessed to covering up
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for her son, and John still had a pretty solid alibi. He had
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been in Rockford that day, his exams and paperwork had been filed that evening,
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and he had phone call records to prove there had been a collect call
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from Rockford's station made in his name. He even had a train ticket.
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But then the cold case team now looking into this case ask themselves this surprising
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question. The investigators at the time of Maria's disappearance had taken John and his
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ticket at face value, but John did have his own car. Was it
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possible that he could have kidnapped Maria and then driven to Rockford in time to
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place that call? By their estimation, if the kidnapping had happened at six
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point twenty instead of six point thirty, then the answer was yes. That
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would have given John enough time to drive to Rockfort and make the call at
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six fifty seven and meet with the recruiting officers at seven point fifteen. But
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even though the deviation from the original timeline was only ten minutes, it raises
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a lot of questions. Witnesses at the time placed Maria's disappearance at six point
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thirty, and the police were already on the scene searching by seven pm.
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Did that mean that John had Maria with him when he went to Rockford.
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Had he already killed her before driving away? Was it possible that an eighteen
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year old would be able to think clearly enough to establish an alibi just minutes
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after killing a seven year old girl. Hoping to find answers, the authorities
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asked the now fifty four year old Kathy Sigmund if she recognized anyone from the
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lineup of photographs they presented her. Finally, Kathy laid eyed on John Tessier
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and she identified him as the boy who'd approached them that evening, but even
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that identification had some major holes. Kathy was asked to remember someone from over
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forty five years ago, and the lineup photos were also questionable. It was
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made up of graduation photos of other boys from nineteen fifty seven, but because
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John had been expelled, he didn't actually have a graduation photo. His photo
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was the only one that was different, with a totally different background and set
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up, and it really stuck out among the others. But John was arrested
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and sent to court. Essentially, what the prosecution had was circumstantial evidence and
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witnessed testimonies from a family that openly hated each other. Probably expect that this
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case would be dismissed. John's defense lawyers spent only two hours in court defending
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him and only interviewed a few key witnesses. In December twenty twelve, when
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John McCullough was seventy three years old, he was sentenced to life in prison,
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but he didn't accept it. He continued to appeal his verdict, and
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in twenty sixteen a judge ordered a new trial against John. Only a week
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later, those charges were dismissed. Another year after that, and the judge
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issued John a certificate of innocence, officially ending his part in Maria's tragic and mysterious story