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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 2: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening nineteen fifty seven, Sycamore, Illinois.
Speaker 2: Christmas was three weeks away, and seven year old Maria
Speaker 2: Riddle went out to play. Soon after, a figure of
Speaker 2: merged out of the falling snow. He was very friendly.
Speaker 2: Minutes later, Maria vanished, leaving behind an abandoned doll and
Speaker 2: footsteps in the snow. In April, a spring thaw gave
Speaker 2: up Maria's body in a nearby wooded area. The case
Speaker 2: attracted national attention, including that of the FBI and President Eisenhower.
Speaker 2: In all, seventy four men and three women fell under suspicion,
Speaker 2: but no one was ever charged with the crime. Incredibly,
Speaker 2: fifty five years later, the coldest case in the history
Speaker 2: of American jurisprudence would be reopened. It happened after a
Speaker 2: seventy four year old former neighbor of the adults named
Speaker 2: Eileen Tessier made a stunning deathbed confession to her family
Speaker 2: about a dark past and a darker secret they knew
Speaker 2: nothing about. Two families would be joined by despair and retribution,
Speaker 2: and in an astounding turn of events, Maria Riddolph's killer
Speaker 2: would finally be brought to justice. The book that we
Speaker 2: are featuring this evening is Footsteps in the Snow, One
Speaker 2: shocking crime, two shattered families, and the coldest case in
Speaker 2: US history, with my special guest, journalist and author Charles Lochman.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to
Speaker 2: this interview. Charles Lochman, Thank you for having me, Dan,
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Incredible and fascinating book about the
Speaker 2: as we mentioned, the coldest case in US history. Tell us, Charles,
Speaker 2: how you came without really giving anything away in this story,
Speaker 2: but how you came to be the author of this book.
Speaker 2: What brought you to this story Footsteps.
Speaker 3: In the Snow, Well, it's an interesting story. I think
Speaker 3: I sort of had a trimming Capodi moment in my life.
Speaker 3: You might have heard the story about how Truman Capote
Speaker 3: was reading The New York Times in his apartment in
Speaker 3: Brooklyn back in the late nineteen fifties, and he saw
Speaker 3: this small item about the murder of a family of
Speaker 3: four in this little town in Kansas, and he turned
Speaker 3: to his close friend Harpily and said, Hey, this might
Speaker 3: be interesting. I think I'll go check it out, or
Speaker 3: words of that effect. Well, I'm not comparing myself to
Speaker 3: Truman Capote, but I had a similar moment, an epiphany,
Speaker 3: if you will. I was reading the Sunday New York
Speaker 3: Times a number of years ago, and it told in
Speaker 3: a paragraph or two about the arrest of a elderly
Speaker 3: man who was charged with committing a crime back in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty seven. At that point, the case was fifty
Speaker 3: five years old. And I turned to my wife, who
Speaker 3: I guess is my version of Harperley. I said, this
Speaker 3: sounds like it might be worth it checking out. And
Speaker 3: I reached out to the family, the family Maria Ridolph,
Speaker 3: she had two surviving siblings, and reached out to law enforcement,
Speaker 3: and reached out to the accused killer and his family,
Speaker 3: and it all came together.
Speaker 5: Fantastic. Now just before we start, so we can just
Speaker 5: get just a sense of where this occurred. This is
Speaker 5: in as we mentioned, Sycamore, Illinois, so in relation to Chicago.
Speaker 5: Tell us where Sycamore might be, and also tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about Sycamore, Illinois, the town itself, and
Speaker 5: how tell us how big or small this place is.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, it's about an hour and a half a
Speaker 3: drive outside Chicago. It's in De Calb County. It's a
Speaker 3: back in nineteen fifty seven, the population was about seven thousand,
Speaker 3: very pleasant to raise a family, and it was filled
Speaker 3: with factories. One fellow told me that you could get
Speaker 3: a job very quickly there in a wire factory, which
Speaker 3: was the town's specialty, quit a few weeks weeks later,
Speaker 3: and then get a job the next day and another factory.
Speaker 3: So it was a thriving, lower middle class, middle class community.
Speaker 3: A lot of gi settled there after the war. It's,
Speaker 3: as you can imagine in northern Illinois, a freezing climate
Speaker 3: in the winter, pleasant in the summer. Maria's family had
Speaker 3: lived there for many years, very much a town a
Speaker 3: pure Americana. Christmas was celebrated in in a very traditional way.
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving was a huge deal there, as it was in
Speaker 3: all small towns in America, and so up until the
Speaker 3: time of Maria's kidnapping, which was unheard of in that community,
Speaker 3: it was a great place to raise a kid.
Speaker 5: Now, this occurs in nineteen fifty seven, so we're talking
Speaker 5: about December. As we mentioned in the opening, Maria Ridolf
Speaker 5: is seven years old and her father is named Mike,
Speaker 5: and so tell us about the Ridolph family. Just tell
Speaker 5: us briefly about the family itself.
Speaker 3: They had the Ridolf's original name was Ridolfo. They had
Speaker 3: come from Sicily around the turn of the century. Mike,
Speaker 3: Maria's father had actually been born in Sicily, but came
Speaker 3: here as a young man, and he was one of
Speaker 3: those fellows who worked in a wire factory and he
Speaker 3: met a woman named Francis, who was a striver. She
Speaker 3: actually co owned and ran a restaurant when they met,
Speaker 3: and then they got married. She was a very intelligent women.
Speaker 3: They had four children and all in all a happy,
Speaker 3: thriving household up until the night of December seventh, nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty seven.
Speaker 5: Now you start with this very dramatic opening, and it
Speaker 5: is certainly a dramatic opening where you talk about that
Speaker 5: it was Maria wanted to play, and she had a
Speaker 5: friend that lived five doors down named Kathy Sigmund. And so,
Speaker 5: as you explain in the opening, tell us about how
Speaker 5: it came to be that on this day that they
Speaker 5: were around, say supper time, tell us about what time
Speaker 5: of the day this was, and how these girls came
Speaker 5: to be to be playing outside and what were they
Speaker 5: doing playing outside?
Speaker 3: Right, I actually misspoke a minute ago. It's December third,
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty seven. It was a Tuesday night. They had
Speaker 3: had a traditional day at school. Their school was actually
Speaker 3: kind of catechorted from where they lived, and it was
Speaker 3: an exciting night because it was the first snowfall of
Speaker 3: the winter season, and Maria had just finished dinner and
Speaker 3: she very excitedly asked her parents if she could go
Speaker 3: out and meet her best friend, Kathy Siegmund, to play
Speaker 3: in the snow and the two little kids seven and
Speaker 3: eight years old, and the first snowfall of the winter
Speaker 3: is a huge deal for all kids, so the parents
Speaker 3: said sure. So she bundled up, wore her kind of
Speaker 3: hand me down a winter coat, got all dressed up
Speaker 3: in her mittens, and stepped outside and met Kathy who
Speaker 3: lived just four or five houses away outside, and then
Speaker 3: they began to play in the snow. They had invented
Speaker 3: a game of their own called duck the cars, which
Speaker 3: basically meant that they hid behind a big oak tree
Speaker 3: on their street as a car would pass by with
Speaker 3: the headlights on, and if the headlights hit you, you lose,
Speaker 3: and you had to kind of swing around a pole.
Speaker 3: That was the game. And then out of nowhere, out
Speaker 3: of the darkness, a young man appeared. He was walking
Speaker 3: up to them, and they didn't recognize him. It was
Speaker 3: strange because he wore just a multi colored sweater, he
Speaker 3: had no jacket on, he had a cap. Under the cap,
Speaker 3: they could tell that he had kind of blondish hair.
Speaker 3: And he introduced himself as a Johnny and asked Maria
Speaker 3: and Kathy whether they would like him to give them
Speaker 3: a piggyback ride. And bear in mind, this is the
Speaker 3: late nineteen fifties, the Eisenhower era, different ways, different way
Speaker 3: of bringing up kids and kids. Although they may have
Speaker 3: been told about being aware of strangers, they didn't have
Speaker 3: the same sensibility that we have today. So Maria hopped
Speaker 3: on Johnny's shoulders. He lowed himself so that she could
Speaker 3: climb on board, and then he stood and kind of
Speaker 3: ran up and then back down the street. And Maria
Speaker 3: thought this was great, and then she ran into her
Speaker 3: home to get her doll, her favorite dog, because Johnny
Speaker 3: asked her whether she would like another piggyback ride, this
Speaker 3: time holding a doll, and her parents remember her kind
Speaker 3: of running through the house. She asked mom whether she
Speaker 3: could carry her or take out her best favorite doll.
Speaker 3: Mom said no, take out the other doll, which was
Speaker 3: a kind of a cheaper rub a doll, and Maria
Speaker 3: ran back out again. She said, not a word, that
Speaker 3: this strange young man had been waiting for her, waiting
Speaker 3: to give her another piggyback ride. So she came out again,
Speaker 3: and at that point that Kathy Sigmund, her best friend,
Speaker 3: said that her hands were getting cold and said to
Speaker 3: Johnny that she wanted to run back to her house
Speaker 3: to retrieve a pair of mittens, which she did, and
Speaker 3: then when she came back, lo and behold, no Johnny,
Speaker 3: and more significantly, no, Maria.
Speaker 5: Let's just go back slow lightly. When Maria went home
Speaker 5: to get her doll because Johnny had requested, he said,
Speaker 5: do you have a doll. I'd give you another ride
Speaker 5: if you had a dollie. So she went home excitingly
Speaker 5: and got this doll. What did Kathy say that Johnny
Speaker 5: said to her about a you know, a piggyback ride
Speaker 5: or a ride in general. And what was her response
Speaker 5: in that close room when Maria was gone.
Speaker 3: Right, it was a very creepy thing. Actually, they were
Speaker 3: there alone waiting for Maria to come back, and and
Speaker 3: there was a kind of a moment of silence, and
Speaker 3: then Johnny looked at Kathy and said words to the
Speaker 3: effect of I like you. And she was kind of
Speaker 3: taken aback and said, well, I like you too, as
Speaker 3: the way kind of a little girl would say. And
Speaker 3: then and he said, would you like to go on
Speaker 3: a bus or a train ride? And she told him
Speaker 3: I don't want any ride. And so the conversation ended
Speaker 3: because Maria came back. But again, that was a red
Speaker 3: flag that this guy was a total creep.
Speaker 5: Now, you say, when Kathy comes back, she doesn't see
Speaker 5: the stranger Johnny, doesn't see her friend Maria. So what
Speaker 5: does she immediately do? What does she immediately do?
Speaker 3: Right? She thought that Maria may have been hiding playing
Speaker 3: another game. So she went to the Riddolph's house and
Speaker 3: knocked on the door. Maria's brother Chuck answered, and Kathy
Speaker 3: told him, told him the situation is Maria here, I
Speaker 3: can't find her. And Chuck said, well, he must be
Speaker 3: hiding from you, and so he closed the door and
Speaker 3: Kathy stood there for a moment and then when up
Speaker 3: and up and down the streets calling out Maria's name.
Speaker 3: Imagine the haunting moment when you she's little Kathy who's
Speaker 3: who's eight years old, is walking down the street which
Speaker 3: is lit by street lamps, and the snow is falling,
Speaker 3: and she's calling out Maria, Maria, and no answer, No Maria.
Speaker 3: So she very smartly went back to the Ridolph home
Speaker 3: knocked on the door again. Chuck answered, and Kathy said
Speaker 3: she can't find Maria. Well, at that point, Chuck, who's
Speaker 3: a smart young kid, went to tell his parents that
Speaker 3: that his kids sister appeared to be uh be missing
Speaker 3: in action. So Kathy went back home while Maria's parents,
Speaker 3: the Ridolph's, put their coats on and went outside looking
Speaker 3: for the little girl, and they couldn't find anything. They
Speaker 3: roamed the neighborhood. All they found was a trail of
Speaker 3: steps in the snow, hence the title of my book.
Speaker 3: It was a very spooky thing because the trail consisted
Speaker 3: of the footprints in the snow of an adult male
Speaker 3: and then the smaller footprints of a child, presumably seven
Speaker 3: year old Maria. And they followed the footsteps, and at
Speaker 3: some point the little girl's footsteps disappear, and the presumption
Speaker 3: was that Johnny the kidnapper lifted her up. Whether he
Speaker 3: did that because she was resisting or or he wanted
Speaker 3: to abduct her remains a mystery. But he lifted her
Speaker 3: up because her footsteps had vanished, but his continued. And
Speaker 3: they followed the footsteps to what appears to be where
Speaker 3: he had parked his car, because they could see the
Speaker 3: footsteps ending and the beginning of a trail of snow
Speaker 3: tie prints that led off to the nearest route.
Speaker 5: Before all of this, Mike is a little hesitant to
Speaker 5: contact the police. He doesn't not to blame him, but
Speaker 5: he is a little Maria's father is a little hesitant
Speaker 5: to contact the police, whereas Francis contacts Kathy Sigmund's mother,
Speaker 5: Edna and gets the story about the piggyback ride and
Speaker 5: immediately recognizes that even though, like you say, it's the
Speaker 5: late fifties. She recognizes and rushes to the police, and
Speaker 5: to the credit, police treat this very seriously, this kidnap.
Speaker 5: They believe it's a kidnapping, right initially from the beginning,
Speaker 5: don't they.
Speaker 3: It was clear that this was a very very serious issue.
Speaker 3: And you're right about Mike. He didn't want to make
Speaker 3: a fuss. Bear in mind, he was just a low
Speaker 3: key guy and the idea of notifying the police was
Speaker 3: must have been anathema to his mindset. But the mom
Speaker 3: had the opposite point of view. She needed to tell
Speaker 3: the authorities, and it was her aggressiveness that alerted the
Speaker 3: police in a speedily way.
Speaker 5: Now, the reaction from the community is profound and again
Speaker 5: very very very dramatic. So tell us about the reaction
Speaker 5: from the media, but especially the community. How serious do
Speaker 5: they take this and how involved are they in this
Speaker 5: search for this missing child?
Speaker 3: Well, the alarm was instantly raised. Bear in mind that
Speaker 3: this is a small community where everyone knew everyone else.
Speaker 3: So as word went up and down the block, there
Speaker 3: was an immediate posse, if you will, of civilians that
Speaker 3: was formed. There are only a handful of cops in
Speaker 3: the local Sycamore Police department, so they needed the assistance
Speaker 3: of the civilians, so really militia was formed. In a
Speaker 3: matter of a few minutes, the alarm was raised. People
Speaker 3: went to house to house there's a little girl missing,
Speaker 3: and then the police cruiser was put out on the
Speaker 3: street and a loud speaker made the announcement that the
Speaker 3: little girl is missing. It. It actually went up and
Speaker 3: down every street in Sycamore, asking people to step outside
Speaker 3: to check their sellers, to check their front lawns, their
Speaker 3: back lawns, and accesspols looking for the missing girl. And
Speaker 3: it galvanized the community. Hundreds of younger men and uh
Speaker 3: and uh uh and uh and uh and uh and
Speaker 3: husbands went out and they uh. A lot of them
Speaker 3: were armed. Bear in mind again small town American Midwest community,
Speaker 3: a lot of firearms uh small uh uh side arms
Speaker 3: and also rifles and uh the uh. There's also a
Speaker 3: lot of I have to say, drinking going on because
Speaker 3: it was a freezing night, and they kind of fortified
Speaker 3: themselves with with the with the U some booz some
Speaker 3: of the men and uh. But they found nothing. The
Speaker 3: state police were notified, roadblocks were set up, but again
Speaker 3: no no Maria and no, uh, no kidnapper people, Josh
Speaker 3: should say people, if I could add just one other things,
Speaker 3: And that night was generally considered to be the most
Speaker 3: eventful night in the history of Sycamore, which at that
Speaker 3: point was one hundred years old. And people from that
Speaker 3: night still remember their precise movements for the way somebody
Speaker 3: of our generation, say, would remember nine to eleven or
Speaker 3: even the Kennedy assassination. You could tell exactly where you
Speaker 3: were on those two historic, terrible days. That's how the
Speaker 3: people of Sycamore considered the night of December third, nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty seven, a night that the Maria Ridolf was kidnapped on.
Speaker 5: This evening too very very interesting to the panic and
Speaker 5: the fear. The Assistant State Attorney James Boyle, was on
Speaker 5: the crime scene, knew about the rubber doll, and as
Speaker 5: you say in the book, he thought there was a
Speaker 5: lot more importance to this doll. He thought the whole
Speaker 5: case might hinge on this doll. So with that same
Speaker 5: public address system that they were announcing that they were
Speaker 5: going to go door to door and you know, people
Speaker 5: were going to submit to a search, he also went
Speaker 5: on a public address system and talked about that doll.
Speaker 5: So tell us a little bit about what he said
Speaker 5: to the public about this doll.
Speaker 3: Right. The doll was the doll that Maria had run
Speaker 3: to her home to take so that she could have
Speaker 3: a piggyback ride with Johnny, and evidently during the final piggyback.
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Speaker 3: Pluss as he was kidnapping her. When she realized this
Speaker 3: was something terrible was happening to her, she dropped the doll.
Speaker 3: What was curious about the doll was that the police
Speaker 3: had conducted a search just early in the evening, and
Speaker 3: then later in the evening in the same location that
Speaker 3: had been thoroughly searched by the local cops, the doll
Speaker 3: suddenly appeared. So Boyle, who was the highest ranking law
Speaker 3: enforcement on the scene at that time, he was absolutely
Speaker 3: convinced that the doll's presence was very meaningful could in
Speaker 3: fact be the key to solving the mystery of what
Speaker 3: happened to Maria. There were a couple of theories about
Speaker 3: the doll. One is that it had been dropped elsewhere
Speaker 3: and a citizen of Sycamore saw it and on his
Speaker 3: or her property, didn't want to get involved, picked up
Speaker 3: the doll and deposited somewhere else. So Boyle felt that
Speaker 3: if he could find out where the original what the
Speaker 3: original location of the doll was, it might offer significant
Speaker 3: clues as to what precisely happened to Maria. But no
Speaker 3: one ever fessed up, and it remains a mystery to
Speaker 3: this day as to how the doll ended up where
Speaker 3: it was found.
Speaker 5: Now you've talked about we mentioned about the FBI being
Speaker 5: involved here, and maybe you can explain how that came
Speaker 5: to be other than that they were overwhelmed in this
Speaker 5: small community. But you talk about a FBI agent, Chured Auerbach,
Speaker 5: that takes over this case, and they talk about the
Speaker 5: possibility or the theory that Maria and the killer had
Speaker 5: crossed state lines. Is that why the FBI were so
Speaker 5: involved and could they get involved just based on the theory.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit more about the FBI involvement,
Speaker 5: because it's interesting when you talk about them actually moving
Speaker 5: into the Ridolph's house home right right.
Speaker 3: The FBI was called to Sycamore twenty four hours after Maria.
Speaker 3: Is a kidnapping under the Limberg Law, they had to
Speaker 3: wait that period of time, the presumption being that the
Speaker 3: kidnapped the child had crossed the state lines, making it
Speaker 3: a federal offense. So Alback was in charge of the
Speaker 3: Chicago Field office in the late nineteen fifties, and he
Speaker 3: and several dozen men moved mass to Sycamore. This was
Speaker 3: a huge deal, the kidnapp being of a child. These days,
Speaker 3: it's huge national news, as you know, back then, it
Speaker 3: was incredible news. This didn't happen in nineteen fifty seven America.
Speaker 3: So even President Eisenhower asked to be briefed and get
Speaker 3: updates on the status of the investigation, which meant that
Speaker 3: ja Egger Hoover personally assumed command of the investigation from
Speaker 3: his headquarters at Washington. So there are FBI files that
Speaker 3: are very intriguing showing how Hoover and his then top
Speaker 3: aid directed the steps that Alback and the FBI field
Speaker 3: agents would take, and it was really micromanagement to a
Speaker 3: degree that was almost dysfunctional. In any event, Alback set
Speaker 3: up a command post at a local motel just outside
Speaker 3: the Sycamore but on the belief that the kidnapper might
Speaker 3: call the Ridolphs and demand a ransom, two FBI agents
Speaker 3: actually moved into the ridolph house and they placed a
Speaker 3: kind of an index card next to the phone for
Speaker 3: the Ridolfs to use in the event that the kidnapper called.
Speaker 3: It was a preset list of answers to questions that
Speaker 3: the kidnapper would presumably make. And meanwhile, the FBI searched
Speaker 3: and searched and did led took over the investigation from
Speaker 3: the local cops. In the state police.
Speaker 5: You talk about Operation Find Maria, and there's all kinds
Speaker 5: of leads, some of them useful, some of them not.
Speaker 5: So useful and you have very colorful chief police. Chief
Speaker 5: Hindenburg is involved and even it's amazing you talk about
Speaker 5: the even resort to going with the mayor to a
Speaker 5: fortune teller, so that there.
Speaker 3: Is exactly they were with the end. Chief Hindenburg is
Speaker 3: an intriguing guy because he up until he became chief,
Speaker 3: he had zero police experience. He was actually the school
Speaker 3: bus driver and did maintenance for the local high school
Speaker 3: and suddenly he's named chief of police. But that's you know,
Speaker 3: small town American nineteen fifty seven, and here was the
Speaker 3: guy who was who was in charge of this this
Speaker 3: investigation that was getting national attention. But it was the
Speaker 3: FBI that really ran ran with the case, and they
Speaker 3: did due diligence. They checked every hotel in town. They
Speaker 3: looked at the young men who hung out at the
Speaker 3: local hangouts like the bus depot, the pool hall, the hotels,
Speaker 3: the gas stations in nineteen fifty seven were kind of
Speaker 3: traditional hangouts for teens and people kind of without jobs.
Speaker 3: And they also looked at the inmates of patients who
Speaker 3: had been recently released from the Illinois State prison system
Speaker 3: and from the state's mental asylums to see if any
Speaker 3: of them were living in Dicalv County, and they went
Speaker 3: to a local dentists because the description from Kathy, the
Speaker 3: lone witness, was that Johnny had crooked teeth, odd teeth.
Speaker 3: So they interviewed all the dentists in town to see
Speaker 3: if any of the dentist patients matched the physical description
Speaker 3: that they had of Johnny. And so they did a
Speaker 3: good thorough job. Unfortunately it went nowhere.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about before we talk about this real
Speaker 5: promising lead to get a description from an anonymous woman
Speaker 5: talking about a man with twenty years old with blonde hair,
Speaker 5: lived in the neighborhood. Excuse me, lived in a neighborhood.
Speaker 5: So tell us a little bit about this lead and
Speaker 5: where it takes them. We talk about an office or
Speaker 5: an agent Gould and an agent Nolan, and she ellicially
Speaker 5: tells them that she knows of a man. She thinks
Speaker 5: the last name is Treshner. So tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit how they put all this together.
Speaker 3: Well, it became the most promising lead that the FBI
Speaker 3: had to pursue. The call came in to the local
Speaker 3: Sycamore Police and as per their instruction, they immediately passed
Speaker 3: on to the FBI and Nicola did not know the name,
Speaker 3: the exact name of this person of interest, but said
Speaker 3: to the FBI that he seemed to His name was Johnny,
Speaker 3: he lived in the neighborhood, he seemed to match the
Speaker 3: physical description of Johnny the kidnapper, and suggested that he'd
Speaker 3: be urgently checked out. And the FBI very quickly surmised
Speaker 3: that this person whose name she couldn't quite spell out
Speaker 3: or pronounce correctly, was in fact Johnny Tessier, who lived
Speaker 3: about a block and a half two blocks away from
Speaker 3: where Maria lived. Johnny was then eighteen years old, he
Speaker 3: had blondish hair that he combed in kind of a ductail,
Speaker 3: and he seemed to be a promising lead simply because
Speaker 3: his name was Johnny, he had blondish hair, and he
Speaker 3: lived in the neighborhood. So the FBI two agents knocked
Speaker 3: on the door of the Tessia home. This is a
Speaker 3: few days after Maria's kidnapping, and the parents answered the door,
Speaker 3: invited the FBI agents and in, and the FBI asked
Speaker 3: where Johnny was, and Johnny was not home, and then
Speaker 3: they asked the routine question of where he was on
Speaker 3: the night of December third, when Maria was kidnapped and
Speaker 3: Johnny's parents, Eileen and Rath Tessier, avouked his whereabouts. They
Speaker 3: said he was out of town. He was in Rockford, Illinois,
Speaker 3: which is about thirty to forty minutes away, and he
Speaker 3: therefore he couldn't have been involved in Maria's kidnapping and
Speaker 3: end of story. The FBI asked to check out Johnny's room,
Speaker 3: so they brought them upstairs and they looked through the closet,
Speaker 3: presumably looking for this multi colored sweater that the kidnapper wore.
Speaker 3: They couldn't find anything, and then they asked the parents
Speaker 3: that They told the parents that they would come back
Speaker 3: the next day when Johnny returned home, and they wanted
Speaker 3: to question him personally. Well, that night, Johnny did come
Speaker 3: home and his mother, Eileen, was in tears. She said
Speaker 3: that the FBI had been there to the home and
Speaker 3: they wanted to speak to him, and Johnny kind of
Speaker 3: shrugged it off and said, that's okay, I don't mind
Speaker 3: talking to them. Well, sure enough, the next day, the
Speaker 3: FBI agents came and Johnny voluntarily agreed to be driven
Speaker 3: to the command post outside town at the motel, and
Speaker 3: the next thing he knows, he's being strapped into a
Speaker 3: a polygraph machine and the FBI had brought in one
Speaker 3: of its top polygraphic examiners to conduct the uh, the test,
Speaker 3: the the the examination, and he started hitting Johnny with
Speaker 3: all sorts of questions, we know you did it, did
Speaker 3: you did you kill Maria Ridolf? What did you do
Speaker 3: with the body? And they thought they had a real
Speaker 3: live lively. They thought this was the kid who did
Speaker 3: it and uh. But the FBI examiner looked at the
Speaker 3: results and and basically declared Johnny innocent. The FBI tests
Speaker 3: showed that he was not lying, so they let him go.
Speaker 5: Let's just go back just a little bit because I
Speaker 5: think this is very important later in the story, and
Speaker 5: I'll bring it back up. What is John Tessier's father's
Speaker 5: reaction soon as the police come. He doesn't seem surprised,
Speaker 5: So tell us he offers, just tell us what his
Speaker 5: reaction is and what he offers the police in terms
Speaker 5: of defense for his son.
Speaker 3: He said, Oh, I'm not so surprised that you hear
Speaker 3: that you've come, because like everyone else on that block,
Speaker 3: he's kind of jittery because his son's name is Johnny.
Speaker 3: He fits the physical description. He lives in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: And also there's an undercurrent that Johnny was kind of
Speaker 3: the neighborhood freak. All neighborhoods in America probably has one.
Speaker 3: In this town's case, in this neighborhood's case, it was Johnny.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of stories going on about him
Speaker 3: about in fact, one in particular that was very in
Speaker 3: view of what happened had happened to Maria, very significant
Speaker 3: in that he had a history of giving piggyback rides
Speaker 3: to young girls in his neighborhood. Also, one young youngster
Speaker 3: now an adult, but back then a kid told me
Speaker 3: that he would be delivering his papers on his paper
Speaker 3: route and he would see Johnny standing in his window
Speaker 3: stock naked. So he had a reputation as being a
Speaker 3: very eccentric young man. But Ralph Tessier, who was a
Speaker 3: popular figure in town. He was He ran the local
Speaker 3: hardware store, He was a gi he was a sogeant
Speaker 3: in World War Two. Overall, everyone seemed to like him
Speaker 3: a lot. He was known as Popeye in town because
Speaker 3: he had tremendous physical strength. He assured the FBI, along
Speaker 3: with his wife that Johnny was forty minutes out of
Speaker 3: town when Maria was killed. In fact, he told the
Speaker 3: FBI that he actually received a collect call from Johnny
Speaker 3: at just about the precise time that Maria was kidnapped
Speaker 3: to ask to be for and that during that call,
Speaker 3: that conversation, Johnny asked to be picked up in Rockford,
Speaker 3: and Ralph told the FBI that he drove to Rockford,
Speaker 3: picked up Johnny, and brought him back to Sycamore. So
Speaker 3: that was an airtight alibi, and you could sort of
Speaker 3: understand how the FBI let him go. He had passed
Speaker 3: the polygraph test and his parents were supplying him with
Speaker 3: the alibi. They still did their checking and the alibi
Speaker 3: checked out to the extent that the FBI reached out
Speaker 3: to the local phone company and they obtained records from
Speaker 3: the general manager of the phone company that established beyond
Speaker 3: any question that a collect call had been made at
Speaker 3: I believe it was six fifty seven pm that night,
Speaker 3: from Rockford to the Tessier home. It lasted two minutes,
Speaker 3: So there seemed to be actual authentication that stood up
Speaker 3: Johnny's rock solid alibi.
Speaker 5: Now was there because of that? Almost certainly because of
Speaker 5: the polygraph success or. He passed the polygraph test because
Speaker 5: of this, the interview with his parents, and they didn't
Speaker 5: find anything in his room. Did were they were there
Speaker 5: some confirmations of information from john that they didn't check out?
Speaker 5: Did they actually go to go ahead?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the big role in the investigation. Decades later,
Speaker 3: people still amazed that they didn't do the basic fundamental
Speaker 3: verification process. They never showed a photo of Johnny to
Speaker 3: little Kathy Sigmund, the lone witness, nor did they make
Speaker 3: him or ask him to appear in a lineup where
Speaker 3: Kathy could identify him. So they had shown Kathy hundreds
Speaker 3: and hundreds and hundreds of photos over the ensuing days
Speaker 3: and weeks, and little Kathy couldn't even believe that there
Speaker 3: were so many bad people in in in her in
Speaker 3: her state, but they never once showed her a photo
Speaker 3: of Johnny Tessier.
Speaker 5: Now, just going back just a little bit, and then
Speaker 5: this is going to be in later obviously tell us
Speaker 5: about the crime scene preservation lack of therein.
Speaker 3: Well, four months pass and it's now April nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: and the case is not cold, but it's not exactly
Speaker 3: red hot either. And then one day a pair of
Speaker 3: mushroom hunters were looking for tasty mushrooms in the forests
Speaker 3: in Way, North Illinois, and their husband and wife, a
Speaker 3: couple from Wisconsin. They were vacationing in Illinois and their
Speaker 3: eyes are kind of peered to the ground looking for
Speaker 3: these mushrooms, and they see a little girl's body protruding
Speaker 3: from under a a log, and they immediately called the
Speaker 3: local authorities in Joe Davis County, which is about one
Speaker 3: hundred plus miles from where Maria was kidnapped, and the
Speaker 3: local authorities went to the crime scene, they removed the body.
Speaker 3: They took the body to the local coroner's office, and
Speaker 3: there they brought Maria's parents up to make a positive identification.
Speaker 3: The bizarre thing about it is that there was basically
Speaker 3: no preservation of the crime scene. Right today, with modern forensics, everyone,
Speaker 3: every law enforcement offisher would know you don't remove a
Speaker 3: body until it's checked out by a crime scene specialists
Speaker 3: and the medical examine that you leave the body where
Speaker 3: it's been found so that you could search for clues
Speaker 3: and take photos and do basic forensic investigation. But again,
Speaker 3: this is nineteen fifty seven. The locals there had really
Speaker 3: never investigated a murder case before, particularly one of national importance,
Speaker 3: so they there was no preservation of the crime scene.
Speaker 3: It was lost forever. Maria's a body was in terrible
Speaker 3: shape and without getting into two groosome details that she
Speaker 3: had been animals had gotten to her over the winter months,
Speaker 3: and it cannot either cause of death cannot even be determined.
Speaker 3: Was she was she stabbed? Was she strangled? Was she shot?
Speaker 3: Where she sexually assaulted? No one could tell the body.
Speaker 3: The weather elements had destroyed much of the of the
Speaker 3: of the evidence.
Speaker 5: Soon after this, we have an agent Roberts that you introduced,
Speaker 5: and a Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Leebelwitz, and they don't find
Speaker 5: John Tesse's story that believable. Do they tell us why?
Speaker 3: Well, John Tessier was wanted to sign up for the military.
Speaker 3: He wanted to enter the Air Force, and the night
Speaker 3: of Maria is kidnapping. The reason he was in Rockford
Speaker 3: is that that was the nearest Armed Forces recruiting office
Speaker 3: and he showed up there this is around seven is
Speaker 3: seven point thirty and made a bizarre impression on the
Speaker 3: recruiting offices. He returned the next day and further in
Speaker 3: against his reputation for eccentric behavior by his physical appearance
Speaker 3: very significantly or interestingly, he also had what appeared to
Speaker 3: be a small scratch on his face, and the this
Speaker 3: lieutenant colonel who saw him got the impression that he
Speaker 3: was I think the word he used was a narcotic,
Speaker 3: which was a old fashioned way of saying a drug addict.
Speaker 3: But it really, uh, what it really amountitude was a
Speaker 3: sense that this was a young man who was lost
Speaker 3: and in the state of panic. And that was the
Speaker 3: impression that the men at the Armed Forces recruiting office
Speaker 3: saw when they when they encountered Johnny Tessier.
Speaker 5: Now with you also included there a couple other murders.
Speaker 5: There's two other girls named the Grimes. The Grimes girls
Speaker 5: were tell us why you included that you even talk
Speaker 5: about Elvis Presley's involvement. This is December twenty eighth, Sorry.
Speaker 3: Right, That was the the Grimes Girls. They were actually
Speaker 3: brought up by Johnny Tessier at his meeting with the
Speaker 3: Armed Forces recruiting officers. During the course of the conversation,
Speaker 3: one of the officers got a call from his landlady,
Speaker 3: whose name happened to be Missus Grimes, and when he
Speaker 3: hung up, Johnny asked the officer, is she related to
Speaker 3: the Grime sisters? Who are the Grime sisters. Well, back
Speaker 3: in a year before Maria was kidnapped, there were two
Speaker 3: teenage girls who were kidnapped outside the Chicago and it
Speaker 3: was a huge story. The girls were later found dead,
Speaker 3: and to this day, actually the killer the killings have
Speaker 3: not been solved. The Grimes case received a lot of
Speaker 3: national attention also because they were kidnapped after they had
Speaker 3: seen the Elvis Presley movie Love Me Tender, which I
Speaker 3: think they had seen something like sixteen times, and even
Speaker 3: Elvis got involved by making an announcement wanting his fans
Speaker 3: to just be alert and to take care and paying
Speaker 3: attention to the advice of their parents. So this was
Speaker 3: a lingering mystery one year later when Maria was was kidnapped,
Speaker 3: and it was just a bizarre thing for Johnny to
Speaker 3: bring up during the course of this conversation. But I'm
Speaker 3: not saying this to suggest that Johnny Tessi was in
Speaker 3: any way involved in the Grimes this case. There's no
Speaker 3: evidence to indicate that.
Speaker 5: You talk about this. Oswald also finding it very odd
Speaker 5: that Johnny very proudly had a little book with some
Speaker 5: interesting statistics or little stats in there. Maybe tell us
Speaker 5: about those little book with the stats right.
Speaker 3: A few days before Maria's kidnapping, Johnny had gone up
Speaker 3: to Chicago as part of the of his effort to
Speaker 3: enlist in the in the Air Force. And while he
Speaker 3: was there, he purchased a what he called a little
Speaker 3: black book, and and he would he apparently listed the
Speaker 3: names of some of the local girls of Sycamore in it,
Speaker 3: along with their measurements. And he actually showed the little
Speaker 3: black book to the recruitment offices in Rockford. And it
Speaker 3: was a childish, immature, stupid thing to do, but that
Speaker 3: was Johnny Tessier. It certainly added to the portrait that
Speaker 3: was being built of him as a strange fellow.
Speaker 5: Now, despite this interest in him, I will repeat that
Speaker 5: the photo of John Tesse at that time was not
Speaker 5: shown to Kathy Sigmund. But you also go on again,
Speaker 5: you can't go into every investigation, but there's seventy four
Speaker 5: men and three women that they have to at least
Speaker 5: rule out and at least they consider. And I guess
Speaker 5: that takes an incredible amount of time. So let's just
Speaker 5: jump ahead a little bit. Till that there is some
Speaker 5: break in this case, and how long does that take?
Speaker 5: And tell us about this interim period of time when
Speaker 5: they're investigating the seventy four men and three women. Tell
Speaker 5: us about this period of time, what it resembles and characterized.
Speaker 3: By Well, Johnny left town. He joined the Air Force,
Speaker 3: and he was sent to basic training in Texas and
Speaker 3: then was transferred to a base in South Carolina and
Speaker 3: then later Japan. He was not only out of Sycamore,
Speaker 3: he's out of the country. So he very quickly disappeared
Speaker 3: from the local from the tension of the local authorities.
Speaker 3: But also bear in mind that the case was very
Speaker 3: rapidly growing cold. I mean you mentioned the seventy four
Speaker 3: men and three women. These are people who very kind
Speaker 3: of quickly rose to the top of the suspect lists
Speaker 3: and then very quickly disappeared when either their alibis checked
Speaker 3: out or they were rejected as as a potential perps
Speaker 3: through the investigative process. And over time the case grew
Speaker 3: stone cold, ice cold, and the fifties went into the sixties,
Speaker 3: the sixties went into the seventies, and the case was
Speaker 3: presumably in the files of those terrible crimes that just
Speaker 3: go unsolved, and that's where it was up until two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight when this very meaningful thing happened.
Speaker 5: Let's just go back a little bit to another really
Speaker 5: important character, very important character named Jan Edwards, which was
Speaker 5: John Tessy's girlfriend. So tell us when she was his girlfriend,
Speaker 5: she was just before the course and tell us and
Speaker 5: tell us about their last their last meeting together, what
Speaker 5: was said, and tell us about Jen Edwards recollections of that.
Speaker 3: Well. Jen Edwards was one of the prettiest girls in town.
Speaker 3: Her father was the local photographer, so all the kids
Speaker 3: knew him from taking the high school yearbook. He was
Speaker 3: also the local police photographer, volunteering his services for crime scenes.
Speaker 3: And he actually owned the loud speaker that was used
Speaker 3: to make the announcement around town that Maria Ridolph was
Speaker 3: a kidnapped. So he was a substantial citizen, a well
Speaker 3: regarded businessman. He and his son ran a local hobby
Speaker 3: shop town, very popular store right next to the movie theater.
Speaker 3: And Johnny Tessier thought he was in love and he
Speaker 3: was dating in his high school years one of the prettiest,
Speaker 3: richest girls in Sycamore, and they actually encountered each other
Speaker 3: the night of it's a little murky. It could have
Speaker 3: been the night of December third, It could have been
Speaker 3: the night of December fourth, the day after the night
Speaker 3: after Maria was kidnapped. So many years have passed that
Speaker 3: Jan has a little difficulty and she's a very kind
Speaker 3: of a truth seeking woman. She has a little difficulty
Speaker 3: remembering precisely what day it was. But they had a date.
Speaker 3: They sat in the car in jan Jan's driveway and
Speaker 3: they chatted about the future, and Jan knew that there
Speaker 3: was really no future with Johnny. He was going off
Speaker 3: into the Armed Forces, and she was still in high school.
Speaker 3: And he may have been in love, but she wasn't
Speaker 3: in love with him. And he handed her a u
Speaker 3: A a railroad ticket because she was so kind of
Speaker 3: trustworthy and reliable, and this was a ticket that was
Speaker 3: given to him by the by the military, that gave
Speaker 3: him free a free ride by train from Rockford to Chicago.
Speaker 3: And she's he said words to the effect of, oh,
Speaker 3: I'll lose it if I hang on to it. Can
Speaker 3: you hold hold it for me and I'll come back
Speaker 3: and get it. So she uh took the ticket and
Speaker 3: she and Johnny kissed good night. And she went up
Speaker 3: to her room, and she had a photo of Johnny
Speaker 3: on her on her drawer, and she uh tucked the
Speaker 3: train ticket inside the photograph, figuring that's the safest place
Speaker 3: where she remembers she put it. And she uh waited
Speaker 3: for Johnny to want day come back and retrieve it,
Speaker 3: and he never did, and that ticket would, many many
Speaker 3: decades later, have a lot of significance of this case.
Speaker 5: It's significant because the police had asked him initially about
Speaker 5: his whereabouts in Chicago, and he talked about taking a
Speaker 5: train at least at some point in his journey. And
Speaker 5: so that's why this ticket becomes so important, isn't.
Speaker 3: It Yes, And also the fact that it was unstamped,
Speaker 3: meaning it was never used. So Johnny's story was that
Speaker 3: he couldn't have kidnapped Maria because he took a train
Speaker 3: public transportation back from Chicago to the city of Rockford.
Speaker 3: But the existence of the unstamped or unused train ticket
Speaker 3: seemed to prove that he did not take a train
Speaker 3: from Chicago to Rockford. He must have had another mode
Speaker 3: of transportation, meaning his own set of wheels, his own car.
Speaker 3: And once you established that, then you come closer to
Speaker 3: establishing the fact that he could have kidnapped Maria, taking
Speaker 3: her away, putting her in his car, either in the
Speaker 3: trunk or in the front seat, door in the back seat,
Speaker 3: and driving off with her.
Speaker 5: The very ironic part of the conversation was, is that
Speaker 5: everybody in the city or the community, part of me
Speaker 5: knew that the suspect in this Maria Riddolph kidnapping was
Speaker 5: named Johnny. So in their last conversation, Jan joked about
Speaker 5: that his name was Johnny, and they had a little chuckle,
Speaker 5: a very ironic chuckle, didn't they.
Speaker 3: They did, and Johnny quickly changed the subject.
Speaker 5: We don't have enough time to really cover this incredible story,
Speaker 5: and why we've covered it so carefully is because it
Speaker 5: sets it up for Obviously, the trial and a later
Speaker 5: investigation now takes fifty five years, so another lifetime of
Speaker 5: experiences and events occur in John Tessier's life. So tell
Speaker 5: us who John Tessie becomes.
Speaker 3: After his service in the military, he came back to Sycamore,
Speaker 3: but only stayed a short time and then re enlisted,
Speaker 3: this time in the Army, and he was as sent
Speaker 3: to Vietnam, served honorably. In fact, he rose to the
Speaker 3: rank of captain and when a bronze medal. When he
Speaker 3: came back to America, he was transferred to a army
Speaker 3: base in Washington State, and he loved Washington State. He
Speaker 3: thought it was the best place in the world to live.
Speaker 3: The years pass and he retires from the military with
Speaker 3: the rank of captain and decides to become a cop.
Speaker 3: So he entered the police academy in Washington State and
Speaker 3: found work after his graduation in a small town police department,
Speaker 3: and there he got into a boatload of trouble. He
Speaker 3: took in a sixteen year old runaway girl and he
Speaker 3: was accused of committing a totally inappropriate act on her.
Speaker 3: I won't even I couldn't go into the details. I won't,
Speaker 3: but basically he was kicked off the force and he
Speaker 3: pled guilty to taking indecent liberties with a minor and uh,
Speaker 3: and that was the end of his police career. And
Speaker 3: then he he decided to change direction, uh and became
Speaker 3: a photographer. And he specialized in nudes. And I actually
Speaker 3: have photos and video that he that he took of
Speaker 3: him in action. And uh, you know, he was certainly
Speaker 3: an artful technically a skilled photographer, but some of the
Speaker 3: shots you could argue were a borderline softcore porn. So
Speaker 3: he had a He was married four times in total,
Speaker 3: he had two kids, and he's now in his seventies
Speaker 3: and uh and living in a retirement apartment in in
Speaker 3: in Seattle with his fourth wife, Sue. When one day
Speaker 3: in two thousand and there's a knock on the door.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's the police, And how do they proceed with this?
Speaker 5: What is the impetus for them banging on his door?
Speaker 5: You alluded to it just a little while ago. What
Speaker 5: happens in this back in Sycamore, we're back at back
Speaker 5: in time. That is the impetus for the police to
Speaker 5: go talk to John Tessier again, who has now changed
Speaker 5: his name.
Speaker 3: Right, He had changed his name to Jack McCullough. And
Speaker 3: why he did that is interesting. But what happened was
Speaker 3: that in the nineteen seventies his mother, Eileen Tessier, she
Speaker 3: was a devout Catholic. She had been born in Ireland
Speaker 3: and she was dying of cancer and she was in
Speaker 3: her hospital room and her daughter Jan was there taking
Speaker 3: care of her, and she was in a semi commentory
Speaker 3: state when suddenly she uh, she called out Jan Jan
Speaker 3: and her sister, her her her her daughter came up
Speaker 3: to her and said, what is it, mom? And Eileen
Speaker 3: Tessier grabbed her daughter's hand and said, uh, Johnny, he
Speaker 3: did it. He those two little girls, he did it.
Speaker 3: And Jan uh uh I knew right away that she
Speaker 3: was referring to Maria Ridolph and uh and and and
Speaker 3: and and little Kathy alone witness the loan survivor, so
Speaker 3: fundamentally it was a deathbed confession. And Jan did what
Speaker 3: a good citizen would do. Uh. She uh called the
Speaker 3: cops in Sycamore, but they expressed really uh total disinterest.
Speaker 3: The case was called. They they did a perfunctory uh
Speaker 3: interview with Jan, and they basically dismissed it. And the
Speaker 3: years passed, and Jan called the FBI and tried to
Speaker 3: get them interested in the case. And the FBI also
Speaker 3: expressed this interest and said you have to call the
Speaker 3: local police, and Jan said, but I did, And the
Speaker 3: FBI basically shrugged their shoulders and said, well, there's nothing
Speaker 3: we can do about it, nothing more from us. The
Speaker 3: years passed, and finally, in two thousand and eight, in
Speaker 3: total frustration, Jan decides, okay, one more time, so she
Speaker 3: sends an email to the Illinois State Police and lo
Speaker 3: and behold. A couple of days past, they call her
Speaker 3: and they're intrigued. They bring her in for an interview.
Speaker 3: They're intrigued even more. They pulled the files. They launched
Speaker 3: a three year investigation into this matter, and that's what
Speaker 3: led to the door knock and in this what turned
Speaker 3: out to be the coldest case in US history.
Speaker 5: We won't give everything away because but like I had
Speaker 5: mentioned before, there's a lot to give away here this
Speaker 5: incredible story. What I found kind of well, not profound,
Speaker 5: is the dedication of the prosecution and the detectives to
Speaker 5: crack this cold case. But in that there's a seriousness
Speaker 5: that nothing could get in the way of their investigation
Speaker 5: and their prose prosecution. So just I said, I don't
Speaker 5: want to give everything away, but I think that we
Speaker 5: can talk a little bit about how the information that
Speaker 5: they get that they try to again try to understand
Speaker 5: his character, but also try to build a case so
Speaker 5: that they can prosecute him for murder after this incredible
Speaker 5: amount of time.
Speaker 3: Right, well, they were truly dedicated to doing the best
Speaker 3: of the case. The lead investigator was a state police
Speaker 3: officer named O'Brien Henley, and what they did was and
Speaker 3: the key to cracking the case was approaching Kathy Siegmund,
Speaker 3: who is now a woman in her in her late sixties.
Speaker 3: She had grown up always wondering about what happened to
Speaker 3: her best friend Maria, haunted by it. Really, she had
Speaker 3: kids of her own, she was happily married to a
Speaker 3: guy named Micah Chapman. And one day she gets a
Speaker 3: knock on the door and it's the State Police and
Speaker 3: they tell her confidentially that they've reopened the Maria Ridolph investigation.
Speaker 3: And she replied, I thought that was a cold case,
Speaker 3: and they answered, it's not. Only not called this red hot.
Speaker 3: And what happened the next is that they proceed to
Speaker 3: put before her an array of photographs taken of young
Speaker 3: men who lived in Sycamore nineteen fifty seven, and there
Speaker 3: were seven photos and she was asked whether she could
Speaker 3: identify Johnny, and she looked at the array and she
Speaker 3: to few, and then dismissed the others and then said,
Speaker 3: that's him. And whose photograph was she pointing to, but
Speaker 3: that of Johnny Tessier. So that really became a major
Speaker 3: moment in the investigation. They now had a positive idea
Speaker 3: of the perp from the lone witness to the crime.
Speaker 3: But having said that, there were problems because, after all,
Speaker 3: could a witness who was then eight when the crime
Speaker 3: was committed be expected to remember and positively identify the
Speaker 3: face of the young man, now in his seventies who
Speaker 3: kidnapped her best friend back in nineteen fifty seven. So
Speaker 3: this became a major point of a legitimate point of
Speaker 3: contention during the trial. But Kathy to this day swears
Speaker 3: that she'd never forgot the face of the man who
Speaker 3: kidnapped Maria, and the judge who presided over the case
Speaker 3: believed her, and she made a very formidable and credible witness.
Speaker 5: Tell us about the way though, that the police and
Speaker 5: the prosecution had to approach this, And again what I
Speaker 5: spoke about is that they were dedicated to do this
Speaker 5: by hook or by crook, So as difficult as it was,
Speaker 5: as seemingly insensitive, possibly as it was. Tell us how
Speaker 5: they had to approach this.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you're referring to jan A, sister Jeane,
Speaker 3: Is that the story that you want me to relate? Yes, right, Well,
Speaker 3: what happened is they determined that Johnny Tessier had done horrible,
Speaker 3: horrible things in his past, not just to the runaway
Speaker 3: that he took in, and that was just a statement
Speaker 3: of fact. I mean, he pled guilty and he was
Speaker 3: kicked off the force, So there was no although he
Speaker 3: does contend that the whole story has not come out,
Speaker 3: there really was no dispute about the fact that he
Speaker 3: had committed some really bad misdeed. But in conducting the
Speaker 3: interviews with the family members, the cops determined that he
Speaker 3: allegedly sexually abused his sister Jane, and she didn't want
Speaker 3: to get involved. This brought back a terrible, terrible memories
Speaker 3: from her childhood back in the early nineteen sixties. She
Speaker 3: was very accomplished woman. She became a college professor of speech,
Speaker 3: and she just as an amazing, honest, intelligent, impressive, impressive woman.
Speaker 3: But she did not want to testify, but they basically
Speaker 3: compelled her to testify by bringing a charge of rape
Speaker 3: against Johnny Tessier, her brother, and the trial was held
Speaker 3: and they felt that that was the more muscular case.
Speaker 3: They were concerned about there being enough evidence to nail
Speaker 3: him on the Maria Ridolph murder, so they decided to
Speaker 3: try him first for the rape of her sister. After all,
Speaker 3: they had alive, living witness, Jeanne herself, who was forced
Speaker 3: to testify, even though she was a reluctant witness. But
Speaker 3: it became a he said, she said, uh a trial.
Speaker 3: There was no forensic proof because the crime, the alleged crime,
Speaker 3: had taken place so many decades earlier. Jane knew it
Speaker 3: was going to be fruitless. She knew, perhaps more so
Speaker 3: than the prosecution team, that that it would do would
Speaker 3: be to reopen terrible, terrible memories and lead to no conviction,
Speaker 3: which is exactly what happened. But justice, I believe was
Speaker 3: was served when, even though he was acquitted of this
Speaker 3: rape a charge, he was later found guilty of the
Speaker 3: murder charge.
Speaker 5: What I found fascinating was that she was Jane was
Speaker 5: a reluctant witness. It was very much like a lawn
Speaker 5: Order episode where the prosecutor says, listen, we're going to
Speaker 5: have to do this despite what we said to you.
Speaker 5: We're going to have to renege on that, going to
Speaker 5: have to prosecute you. You have to realize that this
Speaker 5: is what we have to do. And very much for
Speaker 5: the reader that's reading this, you're on the edge of
Speaker 5: your seat, realizing or believing that this is the strategy
Speaker 5: to be able to do this circumstantial murder case, is
Speaker 5: to be able to do this less circumstantial but still
Speaker 5: circumstantial sexual assault. And when that trials, it really is
Speaker 5: you're really not sure what's going to go on. And
Speaker 5: again it's never really a foregone conclusion. So it was
Speaker 5: very interesting, very touch and go when the strategy of
Speaker 5: using that verse trial to strengthen the murder trial actually
Speaker 5: didn't work at all.
Speaker 3: It totally backfired. Johnny Tess, then now known as Jack McCullough,
Speaker 3: he thought that he was more worried about the rapetrol
Speaker 3: than the murder trial. When he was acquitted of the rape,
Speaker 3: he felt supremely confident that he would that he would
Speaker 3: be found not guilty of the murder, and he went
Speaker 3: into that murder trial fully expecting an acquittal.
Speaker 5: Now in the trial, is there anything that is spectacular
Speaker 5: about the prosecution knowing that they have lost this this
Speaker 5: sexual assault case, knowing that you know the odds are
Speaker 5: against them. With this case again the coldest case in
Speaker 5: American history, and the longer it remains cold, and the
Speaker 5: less forensic evidence and what we didn't mention too is
Speaker 5: there's a lot of there was a lot of problems
Speaker 5: with Kathy Sigmund's description of Johnny as well, varying in age.
Speaker 5: Wasn't really sure what the tooth, what the issue was
Speaker 5: with the teeth. So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Well, the case was built entirely on, as you say,
Speaker 3: circumstantial evidence. There were no forensics. They exhumed Maria's body
Speaker 3: and they did determine through modern forensic examination that the
Speaker 3: cause of death was due to stab wounds into her
Speaker 3: little chest. They found evidence of that she might have
Speaker 3: also been strangled, but they couldnot really determine that because
Speaker 3: it was not enough bodily evidence to make that determination.
Speaker 3: But the case was methodical in that it was built
Speaker 3: on circumstantial evidence. The key witnesses were Kathy Sigmund, who yes,
Speaker 3: it's true, she was eight years old at the time,
Speaker 3: and her description of the purp it was pretty close
Speaker 3: to what Johnny did look like in terms of the hair,
Speaker 3: his size, his age. I mean, I think she said
Speaker 3: that he was in his early twenties when in fact
Speaker 3: he was eighteen. But for an eight year old grow
Speaker 3: that's still a pretty impressive, pretty impressive, uh depiction of
Speaker 3: the suspect. And there were other key bits of the
Speaker 3: evidence that that the prosecution put forward, including the jailhouse snitches,
Speaker 3: three jailhouse inmates who came to know Jack McCulloch at
Speaker 3: the Coal County Jail who he they said, made confessions
Speaker 3: to in terms of his involvement in Maria's in Maria's murder,
Speaker 3: and there were other circumstantial items that methodically built the
Speaker 3: case that that he, in all probability did commit this crime.
Speaker 5: You know what I find the most profound in this
Speaker 5: five years of reading and doing these interviews with specific books,
Speaker 5: is that despite all of the overwhelming evidence and even
Speaker 5: the convictions, some of these guys take their tortuous behavior
Speaker 5: to another level when the innocent victim, the wife Sue
Speaker 5: and the daughter Janey, are involved in this as well,
Speaker 5: where there's never any real confession despite what he says
Speaker 5: to the jail house snitches, so that they're involved as well,
Speaker 5: believing in him, somebody believing in his innocence. So tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about they didn't attend the trial,
Speaker 5: but tell us about their participation. And again you tell
Speaker 5: us about what you have in the book about their
Speaker 5: involvement and their reaction.
Speaker 3: Well, despite the terrible deed that he's committed to that
Speaker 3: he committed over the years, he does have his defenders
Speaker 3: and his family is still very very supportive of him.
Speaker 3: As I said, is married to his wife Sue, who
Speaker 3: is actually absolutely convinced innocence. Uh. Stepdaughter Janey has been
Speaker 3: a key uh a key uh uh in in in
Speaker 3: defending him on the internet and in interviews and certainly
Speaker 3: in the conversations that I've had with her in the
Speaker 3: research for the book. Her husband, Casey also is very
Speaker 3: very uh vehement in his insistence that Jack McCulloch h
Speaker 3: slash Johnny Tessier has been railroaded. So uh he uh,
Speaker 3: he does have his his his family members who who
Speaker 3: believe in his innocence. Having said that his uh hish
Speaker 3: his siblings from when he lived in Sycamore are absolutely
Speaker 3: convinced of his guilt, and uh it's rare that you
Speaker 3: see brother and sisters. Uh he comes he comes from
Speaker 3: a large family who are absolutely unanimous in their belief
Speaker 3: that he killed Maria, and they grew up with him,
Speaker 3: they know him best, and that to me was very
Speaker 3: telling that his own family at least his family from
Speaker 3: Sycamore had totally turned on him, even his own son,
Speaker 3: and believes he's guilty.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating too when it's sort of one by one
Speaker 5: as they are again outside the courtroom before they testify,
Speaker 5: and as for law, they come in, they testify, then
Speaker 5: they sit right in front join the other family members,
Speaker 5: and it is really a family face off, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It is they became friends with the Ridolphs and also
Speaker 3: with Kathy Sigmund and her husband. There was a bond
Speaker 3: there and the general desire on the part of the
Speaker 3: tests he Is and the ridolph to finally see the Ridolfs,
Speaker 3: to finally see justice, to see justice. And you use
Speaker 3: the word profound, and you're absolutely right. It was a
Speaker 3: profound moment for the tess he Is to be embraced
Speaker 3: by Chuck Ridolf and his sister Pat. Chuck is now
Speaker 3: a church deacon. That's little Maria is a brother. And
Speaker 3: it meant a lot to them that instead of being
Speaker 3: shunned by their hometown, they were in fact embraced by
Speaker 3: the people who lived with this terrible event for their
Speaker 3: entire lives. The Riddolph family.
Speaker 5: You talked about how important this crime was to Sycamore initially,
Speaker 5: how it put them on this tragic map of America
Speaker 5: and put the focus of all America on this little
Speaker 5: place and this event. What was the reaction to Sycamore
Speaker 5: after this fifty five years later, and what was the
Speaker 5: media's tell us about the app math of this and
Speaker 5: it's effect on Sycamore, Illinois.
Speaker 3: When the verdict came down, there were there was an
Speaker 3: eruption of cheers in the courtroom, and it was actually
Speaker 3: led by the defendant's own siblings. They were absolutely thrilled
Speaker 3: that he had been found guilty. And for the citizens
Speaker 3: of Sycamore, it meant a closure. It meant that this
Speaker 3: haunting crime that had been committed five decades in the
Speaker 3: past was now finally officially solved. And one of the
Speaker 3: curious things about it, though, is that the prosecutor who
Speaker 3: brought the charges, when he ran for reelection, he was
Speaker 3: actually defeated. A lot of citizens believed that he spent
Speaker 3: too much time and money on the Riddawf case when
Speaker 3: he should have been focusing on more immediate concerns like
Speaker 3: street crime and h and drug abuse in in in
Speaker 3: the town. So you would think that he'd be hailed
Speaker 3: a hero, and he was certainly to the Ridolphs and
Speaker 3: to the to the Tessia family, but he was defeated
Speaker 3: in his re election bid, which to me was a
Speaker 3: you know, a really fascinating epilogue to this, to this drama.
Speaker 5: Maybe I misunderstood the importance. But wasn't there an issue
Speaker 5: with the way Judge Stuckert had conducted himself at the trial,
Speaker 5: and as a prosecutor, he had issue with that and
Speaker 5: sort of stirred up the muck a little bit, and
Speaker 5: maybe that contributed to his defeat.
Speaker 3: Politically, right, right? That did happen. Stuckart was actually the
Speaker 3: judge who presided over the rape trial, and it was
Speaker 3: a bench troum, meaning there was no jury. The judge
Speaker 3: would be sole trier effect and also the sole decision maker,
Speaker 3: so the judge would hear the evidence presented the way
Speaker 3: jury would. Uh. And she heard that stuck had heard
Speaker 3: the evidence in the in the in the rape case
Speaker 3: and and found found him not guilty, which was I
Speaker 3: think a courageous uh decision on her part. It was,
Speaker 3: as Jean herself said, it was a it was a
Speaker 3: difficult case to bring to court, and even Jeane didn't
Speaker 3: want it to happen. Even Jane knew that it was
Speaker 3: unlikely that it would be it would end in his conviction,
Speaker 3: and the judge, certainly as a matter of law, agreed
Speaker 3: with that assessment. But Clay Campbell, who was then the
Speaker 3: state's attorney who led the prosecution team, was was fit
Speaker 3: to be tied, and he publicly denounced the judge Stuckart,
Speaker 3: and which was really quite remarkable because, as you know,
Speaker 3: a prosecution, a prosecutor rarely goes after a presiding judge
Speaker 3: when the case goes against him or her, And it
Speaker 3: was quite the local uproar over his reaction to her decision.
Speaker 3: But as a result of that, and maybe strategically it
Speaker 3: was a smart thing for him to do, it resulted
Speaker 3: in her removing himself herself from presiding over the murder trial.
Speaker 3: So here's the I won't call her a defendant friendly judge,
Speaker 3: but certainly, based on her decision in the rape case,
Speaker 3: she was skeptical of a cold case of this nature
Speaker 3: trying the defendant and finding him guilty based on that
Speaker 3: that decades old evidence, So she removed herself from presiding
Speaker 3: over the murder trial. They brought in a judge from
Speaker 3: another county to preside over the trial, and he was
Speaker 3: certainly from get go far more favorable to the prosecution
Speaker 3: than he was to the defense team, and he ultimately
Speaker 3: found him guilty. Incidentally, the state appeals court recently upheld
Speaker 3: the guilty verdict, so McCulloch is in jail for the
Speaker 3: rest of his life, and he's almost certainly there to
Speaker 3: stay until his death.
Speaker 5: What I found the most surprising was Jeanne despite the
Speaker 5: police kind of betraying her a little bit and forcing
Speaker 5: her into going to this trial and then a tot
Speaker 5: negative experience because there was no conviction. But it was very,
Speaker 5: very surprising to see Jeans later react about the whole thing.
Speaker 5: I thought that was again profound.
Speaker 3: Yes, Gine, as I said, is a remarkable woman. After
Speaker 3: she left the world of academia, she became a chaplain
Speaker 3: and her role in the local hospital in Kentucky was
Speaker 3: to take care of the parents of children who were
Speaker 3: on the verge of death or have been brought in
Speaker 3: due to a terrible accident. Imagine picking that as your profession.
Speaker 3: You have to have a lot of sensitivity and depthness
Speaker 3: to your character to even consider doing work like that.
Speaker 3: But Jeane. She's she's amazing and even after the terrible
Speaker 3: ordeal that she had at the rape trial, she she
Speaker 3: did become a friendly witness a murder Toronto and offered
Speaker 3: to some key testimony against her brother.
Speaker 5: Now you did correspond with, not that we want to
Speaker 5: give him much time I think to say much. But
Speaker 5: you did talk to John Tesse. You know of his
Speaker 5: whereabouts and you speak about it in the book. Interesting
Speaker 5: he was moved. But yet talk about John Tessier post
Speaker 5: conviction in prison.
Speaker 3: Tessia slash McCulloch uh was found guilty and he I
Speaker 3: interviewed him, spent hours with him at the Pontiac Correctional
Speaker 3: Facility in Illinois where he's currently incarcerated. It's a maximum
Speaker 3: security level one facility. Uh. He Uh, he's in good health.
Speaker 3: He plays a handball in basketball, and he lifts weights.
Speaker 3: He's absolutely convinced that he'll be released one day. Good
Speaker 3: luck with that, and uh, but he's having a terrible
Speaker 3: time there in there. He told me about one incident,
Speaker 3: actually his wife told me what happened. He was sleeping
Speaker 3: in his cell and his cellmate stabbed him with a toothbrush,
Speaker 3: stabbed him right in the eye with it with his
Speaker 3: toothbrush and he almost lost his eye. So it's a
Speaker 3: terrible environment environment to to to live in as an
Speaker 3: ex cop and as a convicted sex offender. He's having
Speaker 3: a particularly rough rough go of it. But you know
Speaker 3: what they say, the worse thing about prison is is
Speaker 3: living with how the prison is. And he uh, he
Speaker 3: is certainly uh uh making up for all those years
Speaker 3: of a freedom that he had when he was in
Speaker 3: the Army and Air Force and being a cop and
Speaker 3: living out west and while Maria's body was in the grave.
Speaker 3: And now I think justice is finally being served.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's a fascinating tail. You've weaved through footsteps in
Speaker 5: the snow, an incredible cold case, but an incredible murder case.
Speaker 5: And because of your due diligence and incredible research for
Speaker 5: this book, you have access to everybody. The characters are
Speaker 5: so well drawn, and you really get sucked into a
Speaker 5: very very compelling edge of your seat mystery. And with
Speaker 5: these heart boiled detectives, they finally get to crack this
Speaker 5: case and bring these people to justice. And I know
Speaker 5: you talk about the character of these detectives being so exuberant,
Speaker 5: and of course at the trial the families, the victims' families,
Speaker 5: again erupting in cheers of joy. It's very odd, But
Speaker 5: again you explain how this works, this that many years,
Speaker 5: that much frustration, that much trepidation, and finally some semblance
Speaker 5: of closure with this.
Speaker 3: Well. I appreciate your kind words about the book. It
Speaker 3: was a fascinating story to research. It was the writing
Speaker 3: came easy to me, if you will, because the story.
Speaker 3: I was so eager to tell the story, and it
Speaker 3: really flowed. And I really appreciate your reaction to it,
Speaker 3: and the reaction of a lot of readers who think
Speaker 3: it's a terrific book.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, for those people that want to know a
Speaker 5: little bit more about footsteps in the snow, or want
Speaker 5: to contact you or continue the conversation, how would they
Speaker 5: might contact you? Do you do the Facebook thing? Tell
Speaker 5: us how people might contact you.
Speaker 3: The book is available in the most bookstores on Amazon
Speaker 3: dot Com and Bonds and Noble and booksmillion and all
Speaker 3: the other online resources that are out there. It's available
Speaker 3: as an e book on iTunes and Kindle, so anyone
Speaker 3: who wants to read it can buy it either in
Speaker 3: print or as an e book. And if you want
Speaker 3: to contact me. They can go on to Footsteps in
Speaker 3: the Snow the book dot com, which is my website,
Speaker 3: and there's a way of reaching out to me directly.
Speaker 5: Well, that sounds great, and thank you very much Charles
Speaker 5: Lachman for coming and talking about Footsteps in the Snow.
Speaker 5: One shocking crime, two shattered families, and the coldest case
Speaker 5: in US history. Fascinating book, fascinating interview. Thank you very much,
Speaker 5: and you have a great evening.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. Dan really appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Good Night, good night.