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