Tagged: Maria Ridulph

Playmate recalls the last time she saw Maria Ridulph

Three half sisters of accused murderer Jack Daniels McCullough testified for the prosecution Tuesday in the 55-year-old disappearance and death of little Maria Ridulph. Two contradicted their parents’ statement that the accused was home that fateful night, and one recalled their mother’s deathbed declaration about the case.

They were preceded on the stand by Kathy Sigman Chapman, Maria’s playmate on Tuesday evening, December 3, 1957. A member of the prosecution team brought her to the witness stand before the session started. Chapman – with close-cropped grey hair and wearing a dark skirted suit – tested the chair, looked around, chatted briefly with the court stenographer, then smiled and stepped away.

The man accused of kidnapping and murdering a Sycamore girl more than half a century ago has an alibi, which was officially filed in court Tuesday. 

Attorneys for Jack McCullough, charged in the kidnapping and death of Maria Ridulph in Sycamore more than a half century ago, must disclose his alibi for the time of the incident at a hearing Tuesday, Kane County Associate Judge James Hallock has ruled.

Court records show that the seven-year-old girl disappeared from her neighborhood sometime between late afternoon hours and 9 p.m. on Dec. 3, 1957, from Sycamore. Her remains were found nearly five months later on April 26, 1958, in Jo Daviess County.