April 22--Murder charges were dismissed Friday against a 76-year-old man who four years ago had been convicted in the slaying of a 7-year-old girl from Sycamore.
A DeKalb County judge dismissed the charges against Jack McCullough a week after vacating his conviction.
McCullough was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 in the killing of Maria Ridulph. But the successor to the state's attorney who prosecuted the case says a review found flaws in the investigation and prosecution.
Judge William Brady left alive a motion filed by Maria's brother, which seeks a special prosecutor for the case.
The judge denied a request from State's Attorney Richard Schmack to dismiss the case "with prejudice." That decision means charges could be brought again against McCullough later.
Citing issues with an inmate's testimony and the exclusion of evidence at McCullough's 2012 trial, Brady last week vacated the conviction of McCullough, who was living in the Seattle area before his arrest in 2011. McCullough was freed from custody, but the charges were still pending and he was out on bond. Those restrictions no longer exist based on Friday's ruling.
Maria's brother, Charles Ridulph, is fighting the decision to release McCullough, an Air Force veteran and former police officer who was arrested after investigators reopened the case.
Last week, Ridulph said he was "shocked" by the ruling and rejects the notion that McCullough is innocent.
Maria Ridulph was kidnapped Dec. 3, 1957, after playing on a street corner near her home. Her disappearance led to an intensive search that included FBI agents, who sent daily reports to Director J. Edgar Hoover. Five months later her body was found in northwest Illinois.
Investigators at the time questioned McCullough, then a resident of the same Sycamore neighborhood as the Ridulphs and known as John Tessier. But authorities determined he was in Rockford near the time of the abduction and would have been unable to travel between there and Sycamore to commit the crime.
In the 1980s McCullough was charged with statutory rape and accused of assaulting a 14-year-old girl but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
McCullough was arrested after a friend of Maria's, an eyewitness, identified him. Kathy Chapman testified that an old photo of McCullough was a match for the man who approached her and Maria the night the child disappeared.
After starting his review of the case last year, Schmack rejected his predecessor's decision to prosecute. In turning against the 2012 conviction obtained by then-State's Attorney Clay Campbell, Schmack said Illinois State Police and other authorities disregarded evidence. Schmack also said a timeline laid out by witnesses and phone records left no chance that McCullough could have been at the scene of Maria's abduction.
Brady cited that in his decision last week. But he said two other factors were more prominent.
Chapman, who had been with Maria shortly before she was abducted, had misidentified someone other than McCullough in a lineup in 1957 as the person who had approached them. When the case was reopened in 2011, Chapman was shown a photo lineup and identified McCullough as Maria's kidnapper.
Brady said the false identification in 1957 should have been made known during McCullough's trial. McCullough's public defender had tried to introduce it, but another judge barred the evidence.
In addition, the judge said information concerning McCullough's fellow inmates in DeKalb County Jail also played a role in his decision. Inmates testified against McCullough at trial and the court was told they did so with no promises of leniency. But one of the inmates now says he had a quid pro quo arrangement with prosecutors.
An appeals court upheld the 2012 murder conviction, but McCullough's assertions of innocence gained new life last month with Schmack's announcement of his investigation.
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Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter. The Associated Press contributed.
