People v. McCullough

• Decision Date: 11 February 2015
• Docket Number: No. 2–12–1364.,2–12–1364.
• Citation: 38 N.E.3d 1
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Jack D. McCULLOUGH, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

38 N.E.3d 1

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff–Appellee
v.
Jack D. McCULLOUGH, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 2–12–1364.

Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.

Feb. 11, 2015.

38 N.E.3d 6

Thomas A. Lilien and Paul J. Glaser, both of State Appellate Defender's Office, of Elgin, for appellant.

Richard H. Schmack, State's Attorney, of Sycamore (Lawrence M. Bauer and Scott Jacobson, both of State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor's Office, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

Justice ZENOFF delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 Following a bench trial in 2012, defendant, Jack D. McCullough, was convicted of the 1957 kidnapping and murder of seven-year-old Maria Ridulph. He appeals. We affirm in part and vacate in part.

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 A. December 3, 1957 Through April 26, 1958

¶ 4 On December 3, 1957, seven-year-old Maria Ridulph lived with her family on Archie Place in Sycamore, Illinois. She was a second-grade student at West School. Her friend Kathy Sigman, who lived four or five houses away from Maria, was eight and attended third grade at

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West School. Defendant, who was 18 years of age in 1957 and was known then as John Tessier, lived with his family at 227 Center Cross Street, approximately a block and a half or two blocks from Maria's house. Sycamore in the 1950s was described by witnesses as a rural farm town, a place where people did not lock their doors.

¶ 5 The corner of Archie Place and Center Cross Street was a gathering place for the neighborhood children, where they played games like hide-and-seek. There was a large tree at that corner, and the corner was lit by a streetlight. After dinner on the evening of Tuesday, December 3, 1957, Maria and Kathy were allowed to play together at the corner, in the season's first snow. Maria ate dinner at 5 p.m., and Kathy's dinnertime was 5:30 p.m. At just before 6 p.m., Kathy and Maria arrived at the corner and played “duck-the-cars,” a game where they would run behind the large tree to avoid being lit up by the headlights of cars on Center Cross Street, which was also known as state Route 23.

¶ 6 At trial in 2012, Kathy was 63 years old. Her married name was Mary Sigman Chapman, although she still went by her nickname, Kathy. Chapman testified that, as she and Maria were playing at the corner of Archie Place and Center Cross Street at 6 p.m. on December 3, 1957, a man approached them, walking from the south. Chapman testified that it was “very, very dark” outside but that it was not dark on the corner with the streetlight “shining down.” Chapman described the man who approached them as having a slender face, a flip in the side of his hair, and large teeth. On cross-examination, Chapman described the man as an “older person,” which she clarified as being, to her eight-year-old self, someone twice as old as she was. According to Chapman, the man, whom she did not know, was slender, maybe 150 pounds, and was wearing a sweater with a lot of colors in it and jeans.

¶ 7 Chapman testified that the man introduced himself as “Johnny.” Johnny asked the girls if they liked dolls and if they would like a piggyback ride. Maria accepted a piggyback ride, and when Johnny and Maria returned to the corner, Maria ran home, three doors away, to get a doll. According to Chapman, she observed Johnny under the streetlight while they waited for Maria to return with her doll. Chapman testified that, after Maria ran back to them with her doll, Chapman went home to get mittens for her cold hands. When Chapman got back to the corner, Maria should have been there but was not.

¶ 8 Chapman testified that she went to Maria's house, thinking that Maria had gone home. According to Chapman, Maria's brother, Charles, said, “She still must be hiding from you,” and told her to keep looking for Maria. Chapman testified that she went back outside to look for Maria but did not find her. At that time, she went to her own home and told her mother about “Johnny and Maria.” Her mother called the police. According to Chapman, over the next several months the police and the FBI showed her thousands of photographs and took her to possibly 20 lineups, but she never identified anyone and was never shown a photograph of “Johnny.”

¶ 9 Charles, who was 11 years old in 1957, testified that the family ate dinner promptly at 5 p.m. and that he and a friend were listening to records after dinner when Chapman came to the door saying that she could not find Maria. Charles also recalled that Maria's bedtime was always at 8 p.m. and that Maria would be in their mother's room reading books for a period leading up to her bedtime. Maria

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did not come home on the night of December 3, 1957. That night and the next day, the town organized a search. Still, Maria was not found over the next days, weeks, or months. Then, during the weekend of April 26, 1958, Charles was on a camping trip when his parents received a telephone call.

¶ 10 On April 26, 1958, James T. Furlong, a funeral director and the coroner of Jo Daviess County, Illinois, assisted in recovering the remains of a female child from among some timber about a half mile off Route 20 in Jo Daviess County. Furlong, 88 years old at the time of trial, testified that the body was found on the ground and that it had some clothes and one sock on it. According to Furlong, the body was “in bad shape from the length of time [it] was out in the timber.” Furlong testified that he took the body to his funeral home in Galena, Illinois. Furlong identified People's exhibit No. 10 as a certified copy of the coroner's inquest report of the death of Maria Ridulph, dated June 3, 1958. Without objection, the portion of the report that contained the autopsy protocol was introduced into evidence.

¶ 11 The autopsy protocol indicated the following. At 11:30 p.m. on the night of April 26, 1958, Dr. K.M. Truemner conducted the autopsy at the Furlong Funeral Home. Furlong, the De Kalb County State's Attorney, and members of the Illinois State Police and the FBI attended the autopsy. The body was identified as Maria's, from dental records. The body lay in a supine position on the mortuary table, partially rotated to the left, with the left hip and knee flexed, the left arm extended parallel to the body, and the right arm flexed at the elbow and wrist, lying across the lower chest and upper abdomen. The right leg was extended and slightly externally rotated. According to the autopsy protocol, the body was clad in one pair of brownish-tan ankle-length socks, a soiled black and white checked shirt, and a cotton knit undershirt.

¶ 12 Dr. Truemner noted that the body was “complete in the sense of skeletal articulation.” He noted extensive soft-tissue loss. However, he also noted that the soft tissues were retained over the right anterior upper chest, right shoulder girdle, and right upper arm to the elbow. The skin and soft tissues were intact over the posterior surface of the trunk to the level of the lower rib margins. The viscera were completely absent. The lungs, heart, esophagus, aorta, and thoracic soft tissues were completely absent “except for remnants of the upper trachea retracted upwards into the base of the neck.” With respect to the neck organs, Dr. Truemner stated that the soft tissues of the neck, including the larynx, “are shrunken into a tough sclerotic [ (rigid) ] mass.” Dr. Truemner stated that “dissection is virtually impossible.” He continued, “It is impossible to recognize evidence of laryngeal or hyoid fracture” or evidence of interstitial bleeding in the soft tissues of the cervical prevertebral space. Dr. Truemner examined the head and found that the bony surface of the “intact” skull “shows no fracture or penetrating wound.” Dr. Truemner found no fracture of the bony skeleton, “with special attention to the skull and cervical spine.” The only wounds Dr. Truemner found were the results of “known trauma prior to the subject's disappearance,” namely, a laceration of the sole of the left foot and a probable vaccination scar on the left thigh. As to the cause of death, Dr. Truemner concluded that “I can draw no conclusion on this subject.” He elaborated by stating that the poor preservation of the body due to the effects of the elements and the ravages of small animals “rendered this doubtful from the outset unless the mechanism had been some form

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of obvious, gross, mechanical trauma. ” (emphasis added.)

¶ 13 Maria was buried in May 1958. The case went cold for the next 50 years.

¶ 14 B. 2008 Through 2012

¶ 15 In October 2008, the Illinois State Police began investigating Maria's disappearance, as a result of information supplied by defendant's half-sister, Janet Tessier. As part of the investigation, Special Agent Brion Hanley first spoke with Chapman on September 1, 2010, for approximately an hour and a half. At that meeting, according to Chapman, Hanley asked if she remembered anything about Maria's disappearance. Chapman testified that she gave Hanley “the exact information that I [could] remember back from 1957.” On September 9, 2010, Hanley showed Chapman a photo array consisting of six black and white photographs of what appear to be teenage males circa the 1950s. All are clean-shaven and smiling, similar in age, with similar hairstyles that might be expected of that era. Chapman identified defendant's photo as that of the “Johnny” who gave Maria the piggyback ride on December 3, 1957.

¶ 16 Hanley testified that the photos were obtained from a 1950s yearbook. According to Hanley, he laid the photos down one at a time in front of Chapman. Gradually, Chapman eliminated every photo except number four, which was defendant's photo. According to Hanley, Chapman picked out number four and said, “That is him.” The photo shows a young man with a slender face, hair worn short on the sides and longer on top, and prominent teeth.

¶ 17 On June 29, 2011, Sycamore police officers, accompanied by Seattle police officers, executed a...