PRETTY MARIA RIDUPLH ACCUSED, DENIES MURDER

PRETTY MARIA

PRETTY Maria Ridulph's accused killer is 'absolutely' going to deny murdering the seven-year-old girl back in 1957 his lawyer has revealed..
Former cop, Jack Daniel McCollough, now 71, was a neighbor of the youngster in Sycamore, IL allagedly kidnapped and killed the youngster, after offering a piggy back ride.
Read more here   

DNA HELPS CRACK 1984 TINA FAELZ COLD CASE MURDER

SOLVED

COPS have made an astonishing breakthrough in the brutal 1984 murder of schoolgirl Tina Faelz.
Almost 27-years ago the 14-year-old's body was found viciously stabbed by a culvert which she had used for  shortcut home from the Foothills High School in Santa Cruz, CA.
But despite a huge police investigation, no one was ever caught for the brutal crime, until now, when DNA has apparently revealed her killer.
Read more here. 

CIGARETTE BUTT SOLVES 1989 ZAHIA SALEM MURDER

BRUTAL

COPS have made an astonishing breakthrough in the brutal 1989 rape and murder of 87-year-old Zahia Salem thanks to a cigarette butt.
DNA found on the end of the Newport, has been linked with Charles Brook Jr, who is already serving time for a 1991 rape.
Read more about it here.

COPS EXHUME BODY OF MARIA RIDULPH; SLAIN IN 1957

DETECTIVES in Illinois exhumed the body of Maria Ridulph--the 7-year-old girl murdered in 1957. Cops are hoping that modern science will help the case they're building against the man they believe raped and murdered her. Jack Daniel McCullough, now 71, was arrested last week in the grisly slaying that garnered national headlines at the time. He is a former police officer in the Seattle area and has denied any involvement.
State's Attorney Clay Campbell said: "Suffice to say science has advanced greatly, thankfully, since that time and we're hoping that advancement in science can assist us in our investigation of this case."
Maria disappeared while playing with a pal near her home, 60 miles west of Chicago. Her body was discovered five months later after spring thaw
and more than 100 miles away

McCullough immediately came under suspicion but said he was at an air force recruiting station 20 miles and had taken the train. The unused ticket was recently discovered by a former girlfriend.
MORE ON MARIA RIDULPH

COLD CASE USA MAKES ITS DEBUT NEXT WEEK!

IN THE USA, there are tens of thousands of unsolved murders, disappearances and killers who've gotten away with it. We want to make a difference. CRIME SCENE USA is pleased to announce that we will soon be launching a brand new blog: Cold Case USA. Cold Case USA will focus on America's unsolved crimes, its missing people and finding its most heinous criminals. Stay tuned!

NEW CLUE IN UNSOLVED KRISTY WESSELMAN MURDER

IT HAS been 26 long years since Kristy Wesselman, 15, was stabbed to death. A long wait for justice since there have been no arrests in the heartbreaking case. Yesterday marked the grim anniversary of the unsolved murder in DuPage, Illinois. But her mom has never given up hope.
Sandy Wesselman said: “I silently promised her I would never stop trying to find the person who killed her. My silent promise to Kristy has remained steadfast."
Now, detectives have revealed a new piece of evidence they feel could help solve the slaying. Kristy was wearing an antique pearl ring with a gold mounting when she was raped and murdered on July 21, 1985 while walking through a field on her way home from the supermarket, Sgt. Robert
Harris said. Her ring — size 4 1/2 with a small chip in the pearl— was never recovered and taken by the killer as a sick souvenir, Harris said. It never turned up

Sandy Wesselman said: “There’s a man out there who thinks he got away with murder. Please help us take away his dream. He stole all of Kristy’s.” MORE ON THE KRISTY WESSELMAN MURDER

JACK DANIEL McCULLOUGH'S HISTORY OF SEX TERROR

HE'S A monster. That's the word around the campfire on Jack Daniel McCullough, the 71-year-old Seattle man charged with the 1957 sex slaying of Maria Ridulph. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, McCullough has a long, long troubling history of molestation, sexual perversion, violence and terror.
* One of his sisters told cops McCullough--originally from Sycamore, Illinois-- sexually abused her on numerous occassons and used her as a lookout when he was “doing that to other neighborhood girls as well ...while he did so.”
* While a cop in Washington state, sexually assaulted a 13-14-year-old runaway in the early 1980s.

*  McCullough "at times took his two-year-old brother and two of his sisters into the attic of their home and made them strip and touch each other sexually."

* The man his niece calls "kindly and loving" had a very troubled marriage. She told cops he was emotionally abusive and made sexually suggestive comments to his daughter from a previous marriage, who was 11 at the time. The ex-wife also said she found nude photos of the daughter taped to the bottom of a desk drawer.

The murder of Maria Ridulph was a case that made headlines around the world in 1957 and '58. She had been playing with a pal when she disappeared with a man named "Johnny." Her body was found months after her disappearance.

JACK DANIEL MCCULLOUGH BUSTED FOR 1957 MURDER

PRETTY MARIA RIDULPH

COPS have made an astonishing arrest in a murder case which is more than 50-years old. 
Back in December 1957 Maria Ridulph was playing with a friend outside her Sycamore, IL home when a young man walked up and introduce himself as "Johnny". 
She accepted piggyback rides from the mysterious stranger and her friend left her, playing with him. 
It was the last time the girl dubbed "Pretty Maria" by newspapers at the time, would be seen alive.      
For the next five months, almost the entire 7000-strong community, searched alongside FBI agents for the girl but in in April 1958 their worst fears were realised when Maria’s decomposed remains turned up beneath an oak tree near Galena. Now more than half-a-century later
Jack Daniel McCullough, now 71 has been arrested on murder charges.
Maria’s brother, Charles Ridulph, 65, was stunned by the news, telling The Chicago Sun Times he had assumed whoever killed her was long dead.
“We’re in shock, to tell you the truth,” said the old timer, who was just 11, when his sister disappeared.

“The shock that it [was] someone that we know from the neighborhood is just an added shock,” said Ridulph, who still lives in Sycamore.

McCullough, also known as John Tessier, was living in Seattle at the time of his arrest and will now be extradited to Illinois to face the charges.

DeKalb County investigators said he had been a suspect at the time of Maria’s disappearance, but that “the case ran cold after McCullough joined the military and changed his name.”

At the time he claimed he’d been on a train from Rockford to Chicago on the day Maria was abducted, court documents state.
But last year one of his ex-girlfriends came across an unused and unstamped train ticket for the Rockford-to-Chicago trip, ripping apart his alibi and prompting authorities to reopen the case. 

Mary Katherine Chapman was the little girl playing with Maria Ridulph the day she was kidnapped. Chapman chose to speak through her husband Friday, saying she’s delighted someone has finally been charged with her childhood friend’s murder.

FLA. COPS SOLVE 1971 GINA JUSTI COLD CASE MURDER

FOR NEARLY 40 years, the Justi family has desperately wondered who killed Gina Justi. Just 14-years-old when she was raped and murdered in August 1971 and left to die in an orange grove, the family now has some answers. Florida cops announced yesterday that they got a DNA hit on a man named Jerry Fletcher, now 69, who is serving a life sentence for killing another teenage girl in Illinois in 1974.
Fletcher had worked as a painter in the Tampa area at the time of the vicious slaying but his name never came up until the DNA match. When detectives interviewed him, he quickly clued into why they were there
and clammed up.

James Justi was only 12 when his sister was murdered. He said the Gina was never far from their minds but they had long given up hope that there would be an arrest.
He said: "It kind of came out of the blue. We were totally, totally shocked. We totally gave up on it."
His brother Tony told the Tampa Tribune that Gina was a typical teen and that her family just had moved to Town 'N Country from Saugerties, NY, when she left her home on Aug. 6, 1971.
She had gone out that day to look at a puppy.
MORE ON A 40 YEAR TRAGEDY

KIRK RIVERS CONFESSES TO UNSOLVED 2007 MURDER

WAS IT A guilty conscience? His motive is unclear but in a homicide case that generated zero suspects after four hard years, detectives will take what they can get. Kirk Jared Rivers, 22, on the left, calmly walked into Sacramento County Sheriff’s department Monday morning bearing a note in which he claimed responsibility for the 2007 killing of John Pogacar, 39, according to spokesman Jason Ramos. Rivers, 18 at the time of the killing, gave no immediate indication of his motive for the crime, nor for waiting four years to confess. Cops, naturally enough, were immediately skeptical.

It was a case that generated few leads but after an interview cops claim that Rivers was privy to details that only the killer could know. John Pogacar was viciously stabbed several times at his home near Rancho Cardova – his body discovered by his father. With the news of Rivers’ confession, friends and relatives are ecstatic at the prospect of closure. One of Pogacar’s close friends, Jesse Jurado said: "We are overjoyed; we are so happy. We’ve been praying to God that this is what we’ve been waiting for. His family needs closure.”
Rivers is charged with murder without bail at the Sacramento County Main Jail. He arraignment takes place later this week.

DNA CRACKS DEAF DAWN NILES' 1981 COLD CASE SLAY

AS TEENS

30 YEARS LATER

A 30-YEAR-OLD Chicago cold case has finally been cracked thanks to new DNA evidence.
Dawn Niles was last seen alive in March 1981, when she left the Windy City's Hinsdale South High School with her boyfriend Gary Albert. Five days later a fisherman found the 15-year-old's body buried in a nearby forest.
She had been repeatedly stabbed and an autopsy later revealed that she had been three months pregnant at the time of her death.

Now, 30 years later, Albert, 48, stands accused of her murder after modern techniques linked his DNA to her body The Chicago Tribune reports.
Prosecutor's believe that Niles and Albert who belonged to the high school's drama club for the deaf and the local chapter of the Junior Illinois Association for the Deaf had fought about her pregnancy.  
Friends told them that Albert didn't want to take responsibility for the child and suggested she tell her parents that she had either been raped or impregnated by someone else, according to court filings.
A defense lawyer for Albert, who had pled not guilty called those statements improper hearsay and argued against them, claiming they "infuse undue prejudice," records show.
In pretrial motions they said that it can't be proved that Albert was aware of the pregnancy and that he had no motive to commit such a crime.
The trial which is set to start this summer is expected to present a number of logistical issues for both prosecutors and defense because the defendant and some of the witnesses are hearing-impaired.
A recent pretrial hearing raised the possibility of using as many as three sign language interpreters at the same time.
Albert is currently free on $1 million bail.

MOST WANTED JOSE RODRIGUEZ SOUGHT IN COLD CASE

"ARMED AND DANGEROUS"

BY the time he was finished, one victim was bound and a second was found shot to death after a fight broke out at a late night party at his home.
But then prime suspect Jose S. Rodriguez vanished after the 2004 killings, which shocked Chicago's, Cicero neighborhood and he hasn't been seen in the seven years since.
Now FBI officer's believe their man, who they consider to be "armed and dangerous" may be comfortable enough to return to the Windy City and they're urging anyone who sees him to turn him. 
The 48-year-old is accused of fatally shooting Gabriella Rodriguez, who he did not know and was not related to, despite having the same last name on November 6, 2004 after a fight broke out.
When the dust settled, FBI's Mike Kosanovich says "One victim was bound and gagged and the second victim, Gabriella Rodriguez, was found shot to death."
He added that the reason for the shooting is unclear.
The search for Rodriguez initially focused on his home country Mexico because cops learned he returned with his wife and children about a month before the murder.
If you have any information about this case, call the Chicago FBI Bureau at (312) 421-6700

RETIRED G-MAN NAMES KILLER IN 1951 TENN. COLD CASE

A NEW book by a retired FBI agent hopes to finally name a killer in a notorious unsolved Tennessee homicide. Murder in Harrill Hills by Bob Allen explores the 1951 slaying of Mary Tabler Hankins, 27, shot to death in her home. She was found by her husband Fred, her life hanging by a thread. She later died and for 60 years the files have gathered dust.

But in an interview with the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Allen names the killer and defends the cop, Sheriff Buddy Jones, who he believes has been unfairly hammered all these years. He told the paper: "This crime could have been solved. But so many things were done different then."
The recently married Hankins' had designed and built a new house about six months before she was killed. The book cites a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to longtime career burglar James William "Bill" Luallen as the murderer. The ex-G-Man believes what began as a robbery spiraled out of control into a sex attack, and finally, murder. Luallen told cops he had stolen the murder weapon, a .32 Colt revolver, then sold it before the killing. Without a confession or further evidence against Luallen, prosecutors declined to bring charges.
The book is $10.95 and can be ordered online at http://www.murderinharrillhills.com. Copies can be ordered through Allen with $13.50 payable to R.S. Allen, P.O. Box 34016, Knoxville, TN 37930.
MORE IN THE KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL

ANTHONY GARCIA'S DUMB TATTOO GETS HIM 65 YEARS

STUPID TONY

 THEY call him "Stupid Tony." A California gang member was hammered with a 65-year prison sentence for killing a rival in 2004. But Anthony Garcia, 25, went one step further with the heinous crime: he had the whole event of murdering John Juarez, 23, in downtown Los Angeles tattooed on his chest. Then, after years a cops spotted the Stupid Tony's stupid tattoo. Game, set and match for the cops. 

DNA HELPS CRACK 1994 LA COLD CASE MURDER

KILLER?

THE case baffled cops for well over a decade but a determined detective refused to be beaten and now thanks to DNA a brutal killer has been brought to justice. Kevin Bernard Smith Jr is charged with the bloody shooting Rupert Thompson and the attempted killing of Thompson’s wife, Dorothy in their LA home back in 1994. The pair were nearly asleep in their ground floor bedroom when Dorothy Thompson woke to find a gunman at the foot of their bed after hearing some glass shatter.
The man then blasted her in the torso before her husband got up and struggled with the thief in their front garden but he managed to escape. 
Rupert Thompson, then 73, later died and Dorothy Thompson was partially paralyzed in her right shoulder.
LAPD Detective Steven Castro refused to give up and after reviewing the cold case in 2009 he decided to give the blood DNA evidence another try.
He said: “There were a couple of drops of blood not id’d. I requested it be submitted again, with the advances in DNA.”
His attempt paid off and he got the hit on Smith, who was in a Mississippi prison on an unrelated drug conviction at the time, from a national database in August 2010.
He has since pled not guilty to charges including murder, attempted murder and robbery.
Castro added: “I am happy that I was fortunate enough to give Dorothy Thompson the news."
Now, he said he  hopes that she will be able to see Smith, who is currently undergoing a psychiatric evaluation judged in court.

VA. COP'S '84 SUICIDE REOPENED AS HOMICIDE PROBE

THE shots rang out in Gates County, North Carolina. It was March 1984. Three shots, then a fourth. For most of the past three decades, investigators believed the dead man lying face down in the creek had killed himself. He was Portsmouth, VA police officer Garland L. Joyner. Investigation revealed Joyner had killed imself over bad debts and had even pumped up his life insurance policies--tell tale signs of a suicide.
Resident Keith Mundie told the Virginian-Pilot: "The buttons from his shirt were laying on the bridge. His wallet, his cards, all of the paperwork from his wallet,
it was all floating in the creek. His wallet was out there, too. That won't no suicide."
And now, after all these years, apparently cops agree and have reopened the case as a homicide investigation. All cops are saying is that there are new leads. The dead policeman--by all accounts an excellent officer--told his wife Lillie he had been working on "something big." She never believed her husband had killed himself. She hired a private investigator - Billy Franklin from Virginia Beach - to report to the insurance company that carried the life insurance policies on her husband.
Franklin said at the time: "I've seen dog-biting cases that were worked better than this one.
MORE IN THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT