Thursday, July 28, 2011

Chicago Cold Case

"Alibi is lost to suspect in ’57 slaying" July 13, 2011|Associated Press

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

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

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

McCullough, who was first questioned in the killing more than 50 years ago, was arrested last month in Seattle. He is being held in the King County Jail on a fugitive charge pending his return to Illinois....

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"Body of girl killed in 1957 exhumed" by Associated Press / July 28, 2011

CHICAGO - More than 50 years after a 7-year-old girl was abducted and killed, authorities exhumed her body early yesterday as they try to put together their criminal case against a former neighbor, now 71....

Authorities have not said what they hope to find, but one cold case specialist said a body that has been in a casket for more than 50 years can still reveal evidence crucial to prosecutors....

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