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APPELLATE COURT KEEPS McCULLOUGH BEHIND BARS IN SYCAMORE MURDER CASE
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NIU names winners of ‘Forward’ scholarship Today is 7th anniversary of shooting on campus By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com
Shaw Media file photo
Jan (left) and Jeanne Tessier embrace on Sept. 14, 2012, outside the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore after the guilty verdict of their half-brother, Jack McCullough, in the 1957 disappearance and murder of Maria Ridulph. McCullough’s murder conviction was upheld by the appellate court Friday and he will remain behind bars.
Murder verdict stands, lesser charges vacated By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com
and JILLIAN DUCHNOWSKI jduchnowski@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – The worries that Jan Tessier had about her half-brother’s murder conviction being overturned disappeared Friday. Jack McCullough will remain behind bars for murdering 7-year-old Sycamore girl Maria Ridulph in 1957, as the appellate court upheld his murder conviction and vacated two lesser charges of kidnapping and abduction of an infant. Tessier, who was 1 year old when Ridulph disappeared, reinvigo- Jack rated an investigation McCullough long gone cold when she told Illinois State Police in 2008 that her mother had blamed McCullough for the crime on her deathbed. “I am relieved, and I’m glad it’s over,” Tessier said. “He’s where he needs to be.” The appellate justices ruled those deathbed statements should not have been admitted as evidence, but they didn’t toss out the conviction because Kane County Judge James Hallock did not rely heavily on it when issuing the conviction. The appellate court tossed the two lesser charges because they didn’t affect McCullough’s life sen-
tence and because prosecutors did not prove the statute of limitations had not expired. The case, reputed to be among the oldest cold cases in the nation to be solved, was the subject of a recent Lifetime Movie Network documentary and a book by Charles Lachman, both called “Footsteps in the Snow.” Lachman said he wasn’t surprised to learn the court had upheld the murder conviction because of the evidence pointing to McCullough’s guilt. He hopes the decision might encourage other law enforcement agencies to pursue cold cases. “Beyond that,” Lachman said, “it provides closure for the Ridulph and Tessier families and the citizens of Sycamore.” Closure is the exact feeling Charles Ridulph had Friday. Ridulph, Maria’s older brother, learned of the court decision through Brion Hanley, a key state police investigator. “At least we feel the conclusion of it now,” Ridulph said. “And I think others will, too.” Ridulph said now is the time to focus on the good that has come from the case, such as the hope that some families might feel about their loved ones’ cold cases, or the Maria Rudolph Memorial Fund that will help children with ties to West Elementary School in
Five key points in appellate opinion • The justices supported Kathy Sigman, Maria Ridulph’s childhood friend, identifying Jack McCullough as the kidnapper decades after the incident, partially because the event was so traumatic. “She was a witness to an event that horrified the community and caused her to be the object of law enforcement and news media attention,” the opinion stated. They noted her description of the defendant matched those of three other witnesses. • The FBI reports that were not allowed as evidence “were authored by FBI agents who had no personal knowledge of the substance of the underlying assertions,” the opinion states. They also were authored after McCullough and his parents would have had a motive to lie to authorities. • McCullough later contradicted the alibi purportedly contained in the FBI reports, telling police different stories for what he was doing the night Ridulph disappeared. • The trial judge was right to ban possible testimony about another suspect Sycamore police publicized in 1996. There was no evidence that suspect was in Sycamore that night, and the justices suspected police were trying to reassure Sycamore residents that an outsider committed this horrible crime as a major anniversary approached. • Testimony about what McCullough’s mother said on her deathbed should not have been allowed because her statements did not implicate her in a crime, as the trial judge had said.
See CONVICTION, page A8
DeKALB – Lizy Garcia saw a little bit of herself when she read about the Northern Illinois University students who lost their lives in the Feb. 14, 2008, shooting at NIU. Garcia, a 19-year-old sophomore from DeKalb, wants to stay in DeKalb to work with the Latino community after completing her bachelor’s degree in community leadership and civic engagement. It’s something she thinks shooting victim Catalina Garcia would have supported as an elementary education major who was active in the Latino Resource Center. “I really just want to carry on that legacy of helping the community,” said Garcia, one of the five students awarded a Forward, Together Forward Scholarship. The $4,000 awards were established in 2009 and are given annually to up to five NIU students who display strong character, compassion, ambition and community service. They are given in honor of Gayle Dubowski, Catalina Garcia, Julianna Gehant, Ryanne Mace and Daniel Parmenter. Mike Malone, the CEO and Executive Director of the NIU Foundation, said although his agency has never solicited donations to the scholarship endowment, it remains one of the university’s most popular, garnering $50,000 in additional donations since it was started. “What emerged from that tragedy was a really strong family,” Malone said. Samantha Garbacz, 22, felt like part of that family when she was in high school. Her sister, Missy Lugo, was a student at NIU at the time of the shooting, and she went to the funerals to show support for the families. Garbacz, a Westchester native and a senior nursing student, said she’d like to use her skills overseas to help people who don’t have access to services. Once she does, she’ll be
Scholarship recipients:
Courtney Crutchfield
Samantha Garbacz
Lizy Garcia
Tara Lenardi
Anthony Roberts
See SCHOLARSHIP, page A8
Rauner creating task force on government consolidation DeKalb County state representative calls move ‘part of the answer’ for Illinois By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com
Bruce Rauner
State Rep. Bob Pritchard
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed an executive order Friday creating a task force aimed at paring down Illinois’ huge number of local governments. The order, which he signed at a ceremony in Elmhurst, creates the Local Government and Consolidation and Unfunded Mandate Task Force, headed by Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti. The
task force is charged with finding efficiencies and encouraging streamlining of local governments, while also examining the burdens that state government puts on them by imposing regulations on them without accompanying funding. “Illinois leads the nation with nearly 7,000 units of government. Many of these unnecessary layers of government are why hardworking families end up paying some of the highest
property taxes in the nation,” Rauner said. Republican state Rep. Bob Pritchard, whose 70th District includes much of DeKalb County, said the state could find savings – and better public oversight – through some sort of local government consolidation. “Every unit of local government has taxing authority and citizens can’t get to all those meetings, so that’s where we need to look carefully at where
can we consolidate, can we put some things under municipalities, put some things under townships and get away from all these individual boards and individual budgets,” Pritchard said. Although consolidation is one possibility for bringing down the property tax burden, he said, an even simpler way might be for the state to pay a greater share of the cost of local public schools, which take more than 60 percent of most property tax payments.
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“Consolidation may be part of the answer, but you’ve got to look at how we fund education,” Pritchard said. “What we’re doing is, the state’s not picking up its fair share.” Rauner’s choice of DuPage County to sign the order is a symbolic one – he praised the ongoing consolidation efforts of DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin in his State of the State address last week. The board is in the process of eliminating some of its smallest
See CONSOLIDATION, page A8
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