Ex-Police Officer Arrested For Child Abduction/Murder 50 Years Later

**Whisper** · July 1st, 2011, 11:50 PM

'Shocked' family learns man arrested in 1957 slaying of Sycamore girl

Murder charges have been filed against a 71-year-old Seattle man who is accused of a 1957 slaying of a girl he allegedly abducted from DeKalb County, officials said today.

Maria Ridulph, 7, went missing on Dec. 3, 1957 after she was last seen playing with her friend near their homes in Sycamore. Her skeletal remains were found on April 26, 1958 in Jo Daviess County, officials said.

Jack Daniel McCullough, now 71, was a suspect at the time of her abduction and murder. But the case turned cold when McCullough joined the military and changed his name, according to the DeKalb County state's attorney's office. McCullough also uses the name John Tessier, officials said.

An arrest warrant containing a $3 million bail was issued for McCullough, who is now in the custody of King County Jail in Seattle and awaiting extradition, officials said.

Maria's brother, Charles Ridulph, spoke briefly today outside his Sycamore home.

"We didn't know until last night," said Ridulph. "My sisters and I are shocked. We have to re-live this now."

Ridulph said his daughter told him today that she was sad her grandparents were not here to see the arrest, but he said he was glad they weren't.
"They don't have to live through this," he said. "We struggled with this so long but now it is happening all over again."

Sycamore Police Chief Donald Thomas said a two-year probe led by Illinois State Police with assistance from the Sycamore and Seattle police departments culminated in Friday’s murder charges.

“This is a very quiet, safe town and this obviously is still quite remembered,” he said.

Thomas said McCullough, who was born with the surname Tessier, lived in Sycamore in 1957, about two blocks from Maria's family. Investigators at the time believed the killer was named "Johnny," but McCullough had an alibi, so they didn't pursue him as a suspect.

Recently, however, new information came to light that implicated McCullough, Thomas said. He declined to specify what the new information was.

“Through a series of interviews, including with Mr. Tessier, we were able to determine he was the person who had killed Maria Ridulph,” the chief said. “We gleaned from that interview that he was the killer.”

On Monday, Illinois authorities sent two Sycamore detectives and two state police detectives toWashington. McCullough was arrested at his home Wednesday.

Asked whether McCullough confessed to the killing, Thomas declined to say. He added that the investigation was not based on DNA or other physical evidence, given that the slaying happened so long ago.

Tribune stories published after the killing say that Maria was playing with a friend in a vacant lot in Sycamore when a young, blond-haired man who called himself "Johnny" approached, telling them he was unmarried and offering to give the girls a piggy-back ride.

The other girl went home to get a doll and when she returned, the man and Maria were still there.

"But in a minute or two the older girl complained of cold hands and went home to get her mittens," reads a story marking the four-year anniversary of Maria's disappearance. "When she returned, both were gone."

Maria's badly decomposed body was found in a wooded area near Woodbine, about 18 miles east of Galena, by a couple looking for mushrooms, according to another Tribune story, dated April 27, 1958.

[...]

http://www.wgnradio.com/news/chi-sea...,7061568.story

Maria Ridulph

You can read all the archives at link also

Man charged in 1957 murder of Sycamore girl familiar to family
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/6...l-in-1957.html

Maria Ridulph was abducted and murdered when she was playing with a friend on December 3, 1957. Her body was found on April 26, 1958 in Jo Davies County. | Photo courtesy of the Ridulph family

**Over The Rainbow** · July 2nd, 2011, 09:23 PM

Another article came out today going into some detail about how McCullough was caught. It's a long article, and I didn't feel like copying and pasting it. I've already had enough frustration trying to (unsuccessfully) figure out how to post pictures. Here's the link. http://missoulian.com/news/national/...96631fa59.html

**Whisper** · July 2nd, 2011, 09:30 PM

Originally Posted by Over The Rainbow

Another article came out today going into some detail about how McCullough was caught. It's a long article, and I didn't feel like copying and pasting it. I've already had enough frustration trying to (unsuccessfully) figure out how to post pictures. Here's the link. http://missoulian.com/news/national/...96631fa59.html

ty @Over The Rainbow Im kinda excited with this arrest b/c we have one from Early 1970s here a few blocks from here where a 6yo was grabbed from front yard and raped and murdered
I posted it someplace on here Ill have to look it up but I remember my stepdad always telling me that story b/c he was raised few houses down and knew the family and he helped in the searchs
paper still runs updates on it and its their biggest cold case in the city they want to solve

**Whisper** · July 2nd, 2011, 09:35 PM

Heres the link to the one by me

http://www.dreamindemon.com/forums/s...=Ljubica+Topic

**Over The Rainbow** · July 2nd, 2011, 10:11 PM

Originally Posted by whisperswing

ty @Over The Rainbow Im kinda excited with this arrest b/c we have one from Early 1970s here a few blocks from here where a 6yo was grabbed from front yard and raped and murdered
I posted it someplace on here Ill have to look it up but I remember my stepdad always telling me that story b/c he was raised few houses down and knew the family and he helped in the searchs
paper still runs updates on it and its their biggest cold case in the city they want to solve

There are three unsolved murders around here. It surprises me, because this is such a rural area. They all happened around the same time. One of them was my seventh grade teacher, Cliff Nelson, a good teacher too. Someone walked in his trailer late at night and blew his head off with a shotgun. Two guys I know, Rambo Hoosier and Matt Livingston were charged, but walked. It was a flimsy case. Here are a couple of links concerning this.

http://missoulian.com/uncategorized/...5a9a1115c.html

http://www.seeleyswanpathfinder.com/.../acquital.html

**Dakota Valkyrie** · July 8th, 2011, 07:27 PM

The "iron-clad alibi" of a former police officer arrested in the 1957 murder of a young Illinois girl is based largely on whether military personnel records from the time demonstrate that he was out of town when she vanished.

But it's not clear those records still exist.

Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, told The Associated Press in a jailhouse interview Thursday night that he had nothing to do with the death of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph, and he wants her killer brought to justice. Her disappearance terrified the small farming town of Sycamore, about 50 miles west of Chicago, and drew the personal interest of then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

He stuck to the same alibi he gave when first questioned by investigators more than half a century ago, when he was 18: that he could not have committed the murder because he had traveled to Chicago that day for military medical exams before enlisting in the Air Force.

McCullough said he didn't believe investigators had ever tried to verify that he was in Chicago that day for medical tests — and records of those tests should still exist in his file at the National Archives repository of military personnel records in St. Louis, he said.

"St. Louis will have records of everything," he said. "If somebody would go there, it would exonerate me."

A fire at the archives in 1973 destroyed millions of military personnel records — including about 75 percent of records of Air Force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1964 whose last names came alphabetically after H. McCullough left the Air Force in 1960.

A clerk at the repository told The Associated Press Friday that no records could be made public without McCullough's signed permission, and there was no immediate way to determine whether his records were among those destroyed. Officials would have to hunt through boxes of paper files to see if his was there.

"I have an iron-clad alibi," McCullough insisted. "I did not commit a murder."
[...]

McCullough was arrested in Seattle last week after investigators said new evidence — including one record that does exist — undermined his alibi. He's being held in the King County Jail on a fugitive charge pending his return to Illinois.

According to a police affidavit in the case, last year, McCullough's high school girlfriend discovered his train ticket to Chicago behind a framed photograph of them — and it was unused. Detectives wrote that when he was questioned in 1957, he claimed he had traveled to Chicago by train.

McCullough maintained that he doesn't know how his high school sweetheart wound up with the unused train ticket — but learning of its curious discovery behind the photograph tickled him. The couple broke up when he left to join the Air Force.

"She doesn't know it, but I loved her for decades," he said. "She got married, and I put it aside and said, 'Eh, give up.'

"But she keeps a picture of me and her for 50 years. Imagine that."

Though Sigman said she was never asked to identify McCullough as the suspect at the time, she picked his photo out of a montage detectives showed her last September, the affidavit said.

The affidavit also alleged that McCullough has a history of molesting girls. One young witness told agents in 1957 that he had sexually abused her on numerous occasions, and in the early 1980s he lost his job with the Milton police department in Washington state after he was accused of sexually abusing a runaway in her early teens. He pleaded guilty in 1983 to unlawfully communicating with a minor.

McCullough declined to discuss those topics with the AP.

"Don't go there. What I did or didn't do in my private life that would make me look bad, so what?" he said. "I didn't commit a murder, and that's all I'm charged with."
[...]

McCullough said he didn't remember everything he told the FBI in 1957, but he said there's a good reason his train ticket was unused: He never used it.

He says his stepfather gave him a ride to Chicago, and after a long day of physical and psychological tests, he hitched a ride with someone he'd just met to Rockford. From Rockford, a drive of more than 40 miles from Sycamore, he called home to ask his stepfather to come pick him up.

Investigators wrote in the affidavit that they have verified that a collect call was made from a Rockford pay phone to McCullough's childhood home that night, lasting from 6:57 to 6:59 p.m. If he made that call, he said, "How am I involved in a kidnapping at 6 p.m. in Sycamore? A fifth-grader can figure this out."

Rockford is roughly on the way from Sycamore to where the girl's body was eventually discovered, in far northwestern Illinois.
[...]

http://www.therepublic.com/view/stor...lling-Suspect/

**princessgrandma** · July 8th, 2011, 07:32 PM

Any child murder solved is a good thing and this one is especially good. After all these years, you know this man thought he had gotten away clean.

Now let's hope he doesn't have a shyster defense team that gets him off.

**Dakota Valkyrie** · July 12th, 2011, 04:01 PM

Oh darn.... NOT

Military records that a former police officer insists would help exonerate him in the 1957 slaying of an Illinois girl were burned up in a 1973 archives fire that destroyed millions of military personnel records, The Associated Press learned Tuesday.

An archivist with the St. Louis-based National Personnel Records Center — a repository of military records — told the AP in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that Jack Daniel McCullough's Air Force file no longer exists.

McCullough told the AP in a jailhouse interview in Seattle last week that the records would prove he had travelled to Chicago for a military medical examination on Dec. 3, 1957, the day 7-year-old Maria Ridulph disappeared in Sycamore, Ill.

But military archivist Kevin Cowan told the AP on Tuesday that there's no longer any documentation of the pre-enlistment exam. He said records from McCullough's subsequent time in the Army show only that McCullough, then using his birth name John Tessier, entered active duty in the Air Force on Dec. 11, 1957. That was eight days after Ridulph vanished from her Sycamore home west of Chicago. Her body was found months later.

McCullough was arrested last month in Seattle in relation to the killing. He's being held in the King's County Jail on a fugitive charge pending his return to Illinois.

A fire at the St. Louis archives 38 years ago destroyed millions of military personnel records — including about 75 percent of records of Air Force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1964 whose last names came alphabetically after the letter H.
[...]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/...20078868.shtml

**Morbid** · July 18th, 2011, 05:22 AM

Sycamore, IL —*Former police officer Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, is being held in Seattle on $3 million bail after investigators charged that, in 1957, he abducted and murdered a 7-year-old girl. Maria Ridulph disappeared Dec. 3, 1957, while playing with her friend, Kathy Chapman. Chapman, who was 8 at the time, reportedly told investigators at the time that she and Maria were under a corner streetlight when a young man she knew as “Johnny” offered them a piggyback ride. At the time, McCullough went by the name “John Tessier.” Chapman, now 61, said that she ran home to get mittens and that when she returned, Maria and the man were gone. It was months later in April 1958 that two people hunting for mushrooms found her remains. According to investigators, police suspected McCullough – who lived less than two blocks from the Ridulphs and who fit the description of the man said to have approached the girls. But McCullough seemed to have an alibi. He had claimed he took the train from Rockford to Chicago the day of the abduction for a military physical. Chapman reportedly said that police never showed her a photo of McCullough in the days and months after Maria was kidnapped. The search for Maria grew to involve more than 1,000 law enforcement officers and many other community members, ultimately catching the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who requested daily updates. No other leads materialized and the case of the missing girl in the small town of Sycamore eventually went cold. Perhaps because Sycamore is a small town, the case was not forgotten. According to court documents, investigators from the Sycamore Police Department reinterviewed a woman last year who had dated McCullough in 1957. During the interview they asked her to search through some personal items. While searching, she found an unused train ticket from Rockford to Chicago given to her by McCullough and dated the day the girl went missing. This discovery re-energized the case against McCullough. Chapman said investigators came to her with a photo of a teenage McCullough. She identified him as the “Johnny” who approached her and Maria the night her friend vanished. Investigators also determined a collect phone call McCullough was supposed to have made to his then-girlfriend from Chicago actually came from his Sycamore home the day Maria vanished — and he gave a ride to a relative when he should have been on the train. “Once his alibi crumbled, we found about a dozen other facts that helped us build our case,” said Sycamore Police Chief Donald Thomas. McCullough has been charged with the abduction and murder of Maria Ridulph. He has reportedly been taken to a regional trauma center for an unreported condition. *His next hearing has been rescheduled as a result. In a recent newspaper interview, McCullough recalled that Maria lived a few blocks from his family’s home in Sycamore and had big brown eyes. “A little doll,” McCullough said of the girl. “She was adorable.” But he still denies harming her. Recanting his previous alibi, he now maintains that he simply did not need to take the train to the military base in Rockford. The files for base physicals during that time that he claimed would exonerate him were recently discovered to have been destroyed in a fire. As with all cases of this nature, I cannot imagine the pain, confusion, and sadness the young girl experienced from the time of her abduction to the time of her death. Whoever is responsible deserves a slice of hell in this world and the next. We’ll have to wait to see if prosecutors can establish that it was Jack Daniel McCullough.
This article is from The Dreamin' Demon, the Internet's self-appointed buzzkill.

More...

**Whisper** · July 27th, 2011, 08:06 PM

CNN) -- Investigators Wednesday exhumed the body of a 7-year-old Illinois girl slain more than five decades ago in hopes that modern science will bolster the case against the man now accused of killing her.

The remains of Maria Ridulph, dead since 1957, were exhumed for tests as the 71-year-old suspect in her killing was headed back to Illinois from Seattle, DeKalb County State's Attorney Clay Campbell told reporters.

"Suffice to say science has advanced greatly, thankfully, since that time and we're hoping that advancement in science can assist us in our investigation of this case," Campbell said.

Ridulph disappeared while playing with a friend near her home in Sycamore, Illinois, about 60 miles west of Chicago. Her body was found five months later and 120 miles away.

lots more at link
[...]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/07/27/...ase/index.html

**Silvahalo** · July 27th, 2011, 11:29 PM

"We didn't know until last night," said Ridulph. "My sisters and I are shocked. We have to re-live this now."

My heart goes out to them. It must seem as though even now as justice is in motion, it does little to take the pain away.
May the fond memories of Maria sustain them and replace the sorrow they'e lived with for so long.

Finally, for you Maria.

**Dakota Valkyrie** · September 10th, 2011, 07:22 AM

Prosecutors will be allowed to get DNA from a Seattle man accused in the 1957 kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old Illinois girl whose body was exhumed this summer.

In a hearing Thursday, Jack McCullough, 71, appeared via a video feed from the DeKalb County Jail in Illinois to enter a not guilty plea in the more than 50-year-old death of Maria Ridulph of Sycamore.

Judge Robbin Stuckert also granted prosecutors’ request to test McCullough’s DNA against evidence recovered from the girl’s body.

McCullough responded “Yes, your honor,” when the judge asked if he understood that he faces a sentence of life in prison.
[...]

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011...a-in-1957.html

I hope the DNA is not too degraded. Wonder if it was collected "way back then" or if it was found on the exhumed body.

**Dakota Valkyrie** · October 3rd, 2011, 07:54 AM

Another victim aand new charges:

A 71-year-old Washington man accused in the 1957 kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old Illinois girl has been charged in a separate case with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl from the same small town.

Illinois State Police announced the grand jury indictment of Jack McCullough on Friday but didn't say when the sexual assault happened. He was indicted this summer on felony murder, kidnapping and abduction charges in the death of Maria Ridulph of Sycamore.
[...]

The alleged second victim told investigators McCullough raped her when she was 14 in Sycamore, prosecutors and state police said. He's now also charged with one count of child sexual assault and four counts of indecent liberties with a child.

"Sadly, we have another victim, and for the families of all victims, the pain never goes away," Illinois State Police director Hiram Grau said in a news release.
[...]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44752895...e-second-girl/

**Dakota Valkyrie** · April 12th, 2012, 04:28 PM

A Seattle man was found not guilty Thursday of raping an Illinois teenager 50 years ago in a case that stemmed from an unrelated charge — that he killed a young girl from the same small town five years earlier.

DeKalb County Judge Robbin Stuckert said prosecutors did not meet the burden of proof needed to convict Jack McCullough, 72, during a two-day trial. He was charged with rape and indecent liberties with a child in Sycamore, Ill., in 1962.

The accuser — McCullough's half-sister, Jeanne Tessier — testified that she was 14 when McCullough picked her up in a convertible and drove her to an unfamiliar house, where he assaulted her in a dark room before two other men also raped her.

The Associated Press generally does not name victims in rape cases, but Tessier gave reporters permission to use her name and talked openly about the alleged incident in an article published online in 2010.

Prosecutors argued that McCullough took advantage of the teen while he held a position of authority and trust. Defense attorneys said no one could corroborate Tessier's story and that there was no physical evidence.

Stuckert said prosecutors also presented no evidence that the girl's behavior, grades or appearance had changed after the alleged assault, and did not address why she had failed to come forward earlier.

"The state simply did not ask," the judge said. "The state has failed to meet its burden."

DeKalb County State's Attorney Clay Campbell was visibly upset after the verdict and called it "a miscarriage of justice."

Another woman testified that she was sexually assaulted by McCullough in 1982 when he was a police officer in Milton, Wash., and she was a 15-year-old runaway. McCullough originally was charged with statutory rape and eventually pleaded guilty to unlawful communication with a minor and was fired from his job.

McCullough showed no emotion in court when the verdict was read, but defense attorney Regina Harris said he cried afterward.

"He's relieved to tears," she said, adding that McCullough opted to have a judge, rather than a jury, decide the case because "it was more about the law than about the facts."
[...]

A grand jury indicted McCullough on the rape charges last September, a month after he was arrested in Seattle and indicted on kidnapping and murder charges in the 1957 death of another Sycamore girl, 7-year-old Maria Ridulph. He has pleaded not guilty, and a trial has not yet been scheduled in that case.

Tessier came forward after McCullough was arrested in Maria's death, one of the oldest slaying cases in the nation to be reopened.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/articl...se-3474277.php

**Icy** · August 20th, 2012, 01:19 PM

Man Charged In 1957 Slaying Must Disclose Alibi

SYCAMORE, Ill. — A Washington state man charged in the slaying of an Illinois girl more than 50 years ago must disclose his alibi at a hearing on Tuesday, a judge said.

Jack McCullough, 72, is charged in the 1957 kidnapping and death of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph, a former neighbor in the small town of Sycamore. But he has maintained that he has an alibi for the day she disappeared and pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors filed a motion seeking information McCullough's claims.

Defense attorney Tom McCulloch told a Kane County judge last week that he needed more specific information on the date, time and place of the slaying so he could better respond to the state's request.

Prosecutor Victor Escarcida has said the DeKalb County State's Attorney's Office has provided enough information for the defense to prepare for trial, and he says prosecutors don't have to offer a specific date for the murder because there is no statute of limitations. McCulloch says the date of Maria's death is critical to his client's alibi.

Maria was abducted from her neighborhood on Dec. 3, 1957, and her remains were found the following April in rural Jo Daviess County.

The (DeKalb) Daily Chronicle reports that Kane County Associate Judge James Hallock ordered McCullough's attorneys to disclose information about the alibi on Tuesday but also said prosecutors must give the defense more information.

Maria's abduction in December 1957 made national headlines, with President Dwight Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly asking for daily updates on the investigation. Thousands of people joined in the search for the girl and fearful parents in Sycamore kept their children locked indoors for months. Maria's body was found a few months later about 120 miles from her home.

McCullough, who was named John Tessier and lived in Sycamore at the time of Maria's disappearance, matched the suspect's description but he had an alibi. It was the same one he gave during a 2011 jailhouse interview with The Associated Press — that he could not have abducted the girl because he had traveled to Chicago that day for military medical exams before enlisting in the Air Force.

McCullough became the focus of the investigation again last year when a high school girlfriend of his discovered an unused train ticket to Chicago behind a framed photograph.

He was arrested in July 2011 in Seattle and returned to Illinois to face charges; a grand jury indicted him on charges of murder, kidnapping and abduction of an infant a month later.

The girl's remains were exhumed from a Sycamore cemetery as prosecutors searched for DNA evidence; they recently were returned to her family and reburied.

McCullough is being held in the DeKalb County Jail on $3 million bond.

http://www.kirotv.com/ap/ap/crime/ma...e-alibi/nRFYn/

**sugarfree irony** · September 14th, 2012, 04:11 PM

SYCAMORE, Ill. (AP) — A 72-year-old man was convicted Friday in the 1957 murder of a 7-year-old girl, with spectators letting out a deafening cheer as the verdict was announced in one of the oldest unsolved crimes to eventually get to court in the U.S.

The sound of sobbing overtook the room as the cheers and applause faded after Judge James Hallock pronounced Jack McCullough guilty of murder, kidnapping and abduction in Maria Ridulph's death. Family and friends of the girl fell into each other's arms; others walked up to hug and kiss prosecutors.

McCullough was around 17 years old on the snowy night in December 1957 when the second-grader went missing in Sycamore, about 60 miles west of Chicago. He later enlisted in the military, and ultimately settled in Seattle where he worked as a Washington state police officer.

Maria's playmate the night she disappeared, Kathy Chapman, was a star witness in the case. She testified that McCullough was the young man who approached the girls as they played, asking if they liked dolls and if they wanted piggyback rides.

"A weight has been lifted off my shoulders," said Chapman, who is now 63, said outside on the courthouse steps. "Maria finally has the justice he deserves."

Others in court included Jeanne Taylor, 57, who said children in the close-knit town lived in terror after Maria's disappearance.

McCullough was on an early list of suspects in 1957. But he had an alibi, saying that on the day, he had traveled to Chicago to get a medical exam before enlisting in the Air Force.

The case was reopened after his old girlfriend contacted police with evidence calling his alibi into question — she had found his unused train ticket from Rockford to Chicago on the day Maria disappeared. He was arrested on July 1, 2011, in Washington state at a retirement home where he worked as a security guard.

The trial has been complicated by faded memories and, in McCullough's case, an absence of physical evidence.

McCullough waived his right for a jury trial and opted for a bench trial instead.

Among the other state witnesses were inmates jailed with McCullough as he awaited trial.

One said he overheard McCullough say he strangled Maria with a wire. Another said McCullough told him he killed her accidentally — that she fell as he gave her a piggyback ride, then smothered her as he tried to stop her from screaming.

Prosecutors say McCullough stabbed the girl in the throat and chest.

In his opening statement, DeKalb County State's Attorney Clay Campbell described the night Maria went out to play on a street corner with her friend.

"This ordinary night would end in horror," he said. "It would end with this defendant dumping her body in the cold, dark woods like a piece of garbage."

http://news.yahoo.com/ex-cop-convict...163107371.html

**LeaveMeBe** · September 14th, 2012, 10:20 PM

I am glad the family finally has answers and I hope this brings closure for them. Maria's story was one of those that stuck with me. I wonder how many others (besides his half-sister) he preyed upon during his lifetime?

RIP Maria.

**Dakota Valkyrie** · December 10th, 2012, 07:25 PM

A former Washington state policeman convicted of kidnapping and murdering a young Illinois girl more than a half century ago was sentenced Monday to life in prison.

Jack McCullough, 73, was convicted in September in one of the oldest unsolved crimes in American history to make it to trial. Life in prison was the maximum sentence he faced.

The sentencing took place in Sycamore, the small community where 7-year-old Maria Ridulph was abducted and killed in December of 1957.
[...]

Judge James Hallock admonished an unrepentant McCullough for turning to face Ridulph's family and friends as he spoke before sentencing.

The judge ordered McCullough to face the bench, but McCullough kept pivoting toward the gallery.

"I did not, did not, kill Maria Ridulph," said McCullough, who grew up in Sycamore. "It was a crime I did not, would not, could not have done."

He pointed to a box that he said contained 4,000 pages of FBI documents. The defense argued during the trial that the material supported McCullough's alibi that he was not in Sycamore the day of the crime, but Hallock ruled it inadmissible because the people in the documents were dead and could not be cross-examined.

McCullough's attorney said that ruling likely will be part of an appeal.

Before the sentencing, a prosecutor, Victor Escarcida, said that McCullough had "left a lifetime of emotional wreckage in his wake."

"Jack McCullough made Sycamore a scary place," Escarcida said. "Now there was a true boogeyman living among them. He is the definition of evil."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.1217111