FILE - This July 27, 2011, file photo provided by the DeKalb County Sheriff's Department in Sycamore, Ill., shows Jack McCullough, of Seattle. McCullough is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, Dec. 10, 2012, in Sycamore, Ill,. for the killing 7-year-old Maria Ridulph in 1957. McCullough was arrested in Seattle in 2011 and returned to Illinois. (AP Photo/DeKalb County Sheriff's Department, File)
FILE - This July 27, 2011, file photo provided by the DeKalb County Sheriff's Department in Sycamore, Ill., shows Jack McCullough, of Seattle. McCullough is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, Dec. 10, 2012, in Sycamore, Ill,. for the killing 7-year-old Maria Ridulph in 1957. McCullough was arrested in Seattle in 2011 and returned to Illinois. (AP Photo/DeKalb County Sheriff's Department, File)
FILE - This undated file family photo provided via the Chicago Sun-Times shows Maria Ridulph with family members in Illinois. Jack McCullough, 72, of Seattle, convicted in September 2012 in the 1957 murder of Ridulph, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, Dec. 10, 2012, in Sycamore, Ill,. for the killing 7-year-old Maria Ridulph in 1957. McCullough was arrested in Seattle in 2011 and returned to Illinois for trial. (AP Photo/Courtesy the Ridulph family via the Chicago Sun-Times) CHICAGO LOCALS OUT; MAGS OUT
FILE - This July 2, 2011, file photo, shows the grave site of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph at Elmwood Cemetery in Sycamore, Ill. Jack McCullough, 72, of Seattle, convicted in September 2012 in the 1957 murder of Ridulph, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, Dec. 10, 2012, in Sycamore, Ill,. for the killing 7-year-old Maria Ridulph in 1957. McCullough was arrested in Seattle in 2011 and returned to Illinois for trial. (AP Photo/Barbara Rodriguez, File)
SYCAMORE, Ill. (AP) ? 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. Judge James Hallock had the option of sentencing McCullough from 14 years in prison to life.
The sentencing took place in Sycamore, the small community where 7-year-old Maria Ridulph was abducted and killed in December of 1957. Like McCullough's trial, it was expected to be emotional for members of both Ridulph's family and McCullough's family, as well as 63-year-old Kathy Chapman, a childhood friend of Ridulph's who was with her until moments before she was abducted and later testified at the trial.
An unrepentant McCullough spoke before the sentencing and was admonished by Hallock for turning to face Ridulph's family and friends. The judge ordered McCullough to face the bench rather than the gallery, but McCullough kept pivoting toward them.
"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."
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."
Prosecutors contended that on Dec. 3, 1957, a 17-year-old McCullough, known then as John Tessier, approached Ridulph and Chapman in front of Ridulph's house and played with them for a while.
When Chapman ran home to get her mittens, prosecutors said, McCullough dragged Maria into an alley and choked her with a wire, then stabbed her in the throat and chest. Then, they said, he loaded her body into his car and drove more than 100 miles to where he disposed of her body in a wooded area.
Ridulph's disappearance drew national attention during a massive, months-long search before her body was found the following April. Reportedly, President Dwight Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover asked for regular updates on the case.
McCullough was one of more than 100 people who were briefly suspects, but he had what seemed like a solid alibi. On the day the girl vanished, he told investigators, he'd been traveling to Chicago for a medical exam before joining the Air Force.
McCullough eventually settled in Seattle, working as a Washington state police officer.
Ultimately, members of his own family helped convict him. During the trial, Janet Tessier, McCullough's half-sister, described McCullough's mother making incriminating comments about McCullough on her deathbed in 1994. The mother acknowledged that she had lied to police when she supported McCullough's alibi.
Once a new investigation was launched, authorities went to Chapman, Ridulph's childhood friend, and showed her an old photograph if McCullough. A half century later, she identified him as the teenager who came up to them that snowy day and introduced himself as "Johnny."
McCullough did not testify.
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