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| PRETTY MARIA |
Former cop, Jack Daniel McCollough, now 71, was a neighbor of the youngster in Sycamore, IL allagedly kidnapped and killed the youngster, after offering a piggy back ride.
Read more here
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Showing posts with label Cold Case. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cold Case. Show all posts
PRETTY MARIA RIDUPLH ACCUSED, DENIES MURDER
Former cop, Jack Daniel McCollough, now 71, was a neighbor of the youngster in Sycamore, IL allagedly kidnapped and killed the youngster, after offering a piggy back ride.
Read more here
DNA HELPS CRACK 1984 TINA FAELZ COLD CASE MURDER
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| SOLVED |
Almost 27-years ago the 14-year-old's body was found viciously stabbed by a culvert which she had used for shortcut home from the Foothills High School in Santa Cruz, CA.
But despite a huge police investigation, no one was ever caught for the brutal crime, until now, when DNA has apparently revealed her killer.
Read more here.
CIGARETTE BUTT SOLVES 1989 ZAHIA SALEM MURDER
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| BRUTAL |
DNA found on the end of the Newport, has been linked with Charles Brook Jr, who is already serving time for a 1991 rape.
Read more about it here.
COPS EXHUME BODY OF MARIA RIDULPH; SLAIN IN 1957
State's Attorney Clay Campbell said: "Suffice to say science has advanced greatly, thankfully, since that time and we're hoping that advancement in science can assist us in our investigation of this case."
Maria disappeared while playing with a pal near her home, 60 miles west of Chicago. Her body was discovered five months later after spring thaw
and more than 100 miles away
McCullough immediately came under suspicion but said he was at an air force recruiting station 20 miles and had taken the train. The unused ticket was recently discovered by a former girlfriend.
MORE ON MARIA RIDULPH
COLD CASE USA MAKES ITS DEBUT NEXT WEEK!
IN THE USA, there are tens of thousands of unsolved murders, disappearances and killers who've gotten away with it. We want to make a difference. CRIME SCENE USA is pleased to announce that we will soon be launching a brand new blog: Cold Case USA. Cold Case USA will focus on America's unsolved crimes, its missing people and finding its most heinous criminals. Stay tuned!
NEW CLUE IN UNSOLVED KRISTY WESSELMAN MURDER
Sandy Wesselman said: “I silently promised her I would never stop trying to find the person who killed her. My silent promise to Kristy has remained steadfast."
Now, detectives have revealed a new piece of evidence they feel could help solve the slaying. Kristy was wearing an antique pearl ring with a gold mounting when she was raped and murdered on July 21, 1985 while walking through a field on her way home from the supermarket, Sgt. Robert
Harris said. Her ring — size 4 1/2 with a small chip in the pearl— was never recovered and taken by the killer as a sick souvenir, Harris said. It never turned up
Sandy Wesselman said: “There’s a man out there who thinks he got away with murder. Please help us take away his dream. He stole all of Kristy’s.” MORE ON THE KRISTY WESSELMAN MURDER
JACK DANIEL McCULLOUGH'S HISTORY OF SEX TERROR
HE'S A monster. That's the word around the campfire on Jack Daniel McCullough, the 71-year-old Seattle man charged with the 1957 sex slaying of Maria Ridulph. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, McCullough has a long, long troubling history of molestation, sexual perversion, violence and terror.* One of his sisters told cops McCullough--originally from Sycamore, Illinois-- sexually abused her on numerous occassons and used her as a lookout when he was “doing that to other neighborhood girls as well ...while he did so.”
* While a cop in Washington state, sexually assaulted a 13-14-year-old runaway in the early 1980s.
* McCullough "at times took his two-year-old brother and two of his sisters into the attic of their home and made them strip and touch each other sexually."
* The man his niece calls "kindly and loving" had a very troubled marriage. She told cops he was emotionally abusive and made sexually suggestive comments to his daughter from a previous marriage, who was 11 at the time. The ex-wife also said she found nude photos of the daughter taped to the bottom of a desk drawer.
The murder of Maria Ridulph was a case that made headlines around the world in 1957 and '58. She had been playing with a pal when she disappeared with a man named "Johnny." Her body was found months after her disappearance.
JACK DANIEL MCCULLOUGH BUSTED FOR 1957 MURDER
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| PRETTY MARIA RIDULPH |
Back in December 1957 Maria Ridulph was playing with a friend outside her Sycamore, IL home when a young man walked up and introduce himself as "Johnny".
She accepted piggyback rides from the mysterious stranger and her friend left her, playing with him.
It was the last time the girl dubbed "Pretty Maria" by newspapers at the time, would be seen alive.
For the next five months, almost the entire 7000-strong community, searched alongside FBI agents for the girl but in in April 1958 their worst fears were realised when Maria’s decomposed remains turned up beneath an oak tree near Galena. Now more than half-a-century later
Jack Daniel McCullough, now 71 has been arrested on murder charges.
Maria’s brother, Charles Ridulph, 65, was stunned by the news, telling The Chicago Sun Times he had assumed whoever killed her was long dead.
“We’re in shock, to tell you the truth,” said the old timer, who was just 11, when his sister disappeared.
“The shock that it [was] someone that we know from the neighborhood is just an added shock,” said Ridulph, who still lives in Sycamore.
McCullough, also known as John Tessier, was living in Seattle at the time of his arrest and will now be extradited to Illinois to face the charges.
DeKalb County investigators said he had been a suspect at the time of Maria’s disappearance, but that “the case ran cold after McCullough joined the military and changed his name.”
At the time he claimed he’d been on a train from Rockford to Chicago on the day Maria was abducted, court documents state.
But last year one of his ex-girlfriends came across an unused and unstamped train ticket for the Rockford-to-Chicago trip, ripping apart his alibi and prompting authorities to reopen the case.
But last year one of his ex-girlfriends came across an unused and unstamped train ticket for the Rockford-to-Chicago trip, ripping apart his alibi and prompting authorities to reopen the case.
Mary Katherine Chapman was the little girl playing with Maria Ridulph the day she was kidnapped. Chapman chose to speak through her husband Friday, saying she’s delighted someone has finally been charged with her childhood friend’s murder.
FLA. COPS SOLVE 1971 GINA JUSTI COLD CASE MURDER
FOR NEARLY 40 years, the Justi family has desperately wondered who killed Gina Justi. Just 14-years-old when she was raped and murdered in August 1971 and left to die in an orange grove, the family now has some answers. Florida cops announced yesterday that they got a DNA hit on a man named Jerry Fletcher, now 69, who is serving a life sentence for killing another teenage girl in Illinois in 1974.Fletcher had worked as a painter in the Tampa area at the time of the vicious slaying but his name never came up until the DNA match. When detectives interviewed him, he quickly clued into why they were there
and clammed up.
James Justi was only 12 when his sister was murdered. He said the Gina was never far from their minds but they had long given up hope that there would be an arrest.
He said: "It kind of came out of the blue. We were totally, totally shocked. We totally gave up on it."
His brother Tony told the Tampa Tribune that Gina was a typical teen and that her family just had moved to Town 'N Country from Saugerties, NY, when she left her home on Aug. 6, 1971.
She had gone out that day to look at a puppy.
MORE ON A 40 YEAR TRAGEDY
KIRK RIVERS CONFESSES TO UNSOLVED 2007 MURDER
It was a case that generated few leads but after an interview cops claim that Rivers was privy to details that only the killer could know. John Pogacar was viciously stabbed several times at his home near Rancho Cardova – his body discovered by his father. With the news of Rivers’ confession, friends and relatives are ecstatic at the prospect of closure. One of Pogacar’s close friends, Jesse Jurado said: "We are overjoyed; we are so happy. We’ve been praying to God that this is what we’ve been waiting for. His family needs closure.”
Rivers is charged with murder without bail at the Sacramento County Main Jail. He arraignment takes place later this week.
DNA CRACKS DEAF DAWN NILES' 1981 COLD CASE SLAY
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| AS TEENS |
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| 30 YEARS LATER |
Dawn Niles was last seen alive in March 1981, when she left the Windy City's Hinsdale South High School with her boyfriend Gary Albert. Five days later a fisherman found the 15-year-old's body buried in a nearby forest.
She had been repeatedly stabbed and an autopsy later revealed that she had been three months pregnant at the time of her death.
Now, 30 years later, Albert, 48, stands accused of her murder after modern techniques linked his DNA to her body The Chicago Tribune reports.
Prosecutor's believe that Niles and Albert who belonged to the high school's drama club for the deaf and the local chapter of the Junior Illinois Association for the Deaf had fought about her pregnancy.
Friends told them that Albert didn't want to take responsibility for the child and suggested she tell her parents that she had either been raped or impregnated by someone else, according to court filings.
A defense lawyer for Albert, who had pled not guilty called those statements improper hearsay and argued against them, claiming they "infuse undue prejudice," records show.
In pretrial motions they said that it can't be proved that Albert was aware of the pregnancy and that he had no motive to commit such a crime.
The trial which is set to start this summer is expected to present a number of logistical issues for both prosecutors and defense because the defendant and some of the witnesses are hearing-impaired.
A recent pretrial hearing raised the possibility of using as many as three sign language interpreters at the same time.
Albert is currently free on $1 million bail.
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