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The Piggyback Killer

December 9, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Maria Ridulph. A little girl who disappeared one night after playing with her friends.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

He's the husband.

And I'm the husband. Feels a little weird right now because normally we have a monitor on that you know, you see us sometimes looking at, but right now we don't have it on. It's starting to feel like old Murder with My Husband, when we would record without seeing ourselves.

You just ate.

I'm stuffed.

You know what I hate, honestly? Is this my 10 seconds?

Sure, go ahead.

We didn’t make an announcement. Um, holidays for those that are celebrating Thanksgiving, the holiday in the US of A. Hope everyone’s having a good time with family and friends. If you do not have family and friends to celebrate with, then that is why we release this episode so you can celebrate with us while listening to some true crime and Gar and Payton, and we love you.

Okay, before we keep going, I will point out that Payton has a new jacket on. And when she puts her arms out, it looks like bat wings. I’m not going to lie, it’s really cool and it makes her really happy. I said to her, “Girl, I said, want to see what I got?” And because when my arms are down, it looks like just another black sweatshirt, and he’s like, "Oh, another black sweatshirt. Exactly what you need."

I was like, “Now just wait for it.” She put her arms out, started flying away, and I was like, “Holy crap.”

Anyways, put your arms out, baby. Let me see. We’ll put a picture on Instagram or something because it’s really cute.

Anyways, I don’t know, I don’t have a tone for my 10 seconds. I feel like especially because we are recording a little bit more ahead than normal, so I haven’t been able to live out my full week of Garrett’s 10 seconds.

We ate some food. We’re back home. Food was really good. Something that I hate is I hate stuffing myself, but it’s so hard not to when food’s so good. You guys know what I’m saying?

Like, there’s full and there’s stuffed, and I’m so stuffed right now. Really.

Oh, you ate your whole meal. You ate your whole meal. You freakin’...

That’s not what I...

No, I did! I scarfed it. I had these fillet and shrimp enchiladas with this—I don’t know what they put on top of it—amazing sauce.

And then I had probably, I don’t know, six or seven gallons of chips and then some beans, buttercake. I was just—I was in my zone tonight, just eating away. It tasted amazing, and I’m so stuffed right now, but it was worth it. I just hate being stuffed, but sometimes you just have to stuff yourself. Sometimes you have to go, you know what? Food is amazing, and so am I. What a blessing.

That’s what I got for you guys. Let’s hop into today’s case, and I hope everyone is having a wonderful day.

Our sources for this episode include cbsnews.com, CNN.com, dailychronicle.com, mbc.com, The New York Times, The Pittsburgh Press, and the National Registry of Exonerations.

A trigger warning before we get into the episode: today’s case includes discussions of violence and sexual assault against minors, so please listen with care.

We obviously live in a world where we are bombarded with news 24/7. There is so much coming at us all the time, it can kind of be hard to keep track. But then there are moments—and hopefully they’re rare—when something so shocking occurs that we remember it for the rest of our lives. Think 9/11, the assassination of JFK. These are moments of collective trauma, when a whole society realizes their world is never going to be the same.

And sometimes this happens on a smaller scale. For the residents of the small town of Sycamore, Illinois, that moment came on December 3rd, 1957, when 7-year-old Maria Ridulph went out to play one night and never came home again.

Okay, I hate people. I hate people. I know, seven years old. I hate people.

Let’s get into it. Sycamore, Illinois lies about 45 miles west of Chicago, and it had about 7,000 residents back in 1957. Honestly, it was a pretty idyllic place. Everyone knew everyone. Most residents didn’t lock their doors. Again, it’s 1957, so most people weren’t locking their doors. They honestly felt comfortable letting their kids go out and play, even at night.

So, it was not unusual when, on the night of December 3rd, 1957, Maria Ridulph asked her mother, Francis, if she could go out after dinner. The first snow of the year was falling, and she wanted to play in it with her close friend, Kathy, from down the street.

Now, this wasn’t like today when mom would call another mom and set up a playdate for a seven-year-old. This was back when seven-year-olds would walk over all alone and knock on the door and say, “Hey, can Kathy play?” This is the type of playdate we are having.

So, her mom says, “That’s fine,” and a few minutes later, the two girls meet out on the corner. They were actually playing a game they called “duck the cars,” which involved running across the street before a car’s headlights could hit them.

It’s around this time, as they’re playing “duck the cars,” that a young blonde man approaches the two little girls. The man then told them his name was Johnny and asked if either of them wanted a piggyback ride.

So, Maria is like, “Heck yes, Johnny!”

What the freak.

“Johnny, I would like a piggyback ride.”

So Johnny carries her up and down the street. She was laughing the entire way, and when they get back, Maria decided she wanted to get her favorite doll to join her on the next piggyback ride, which is just devastating.

So, she ran back to her house, leaving Kathy alone with Johnny because she was going to get her doll. And while Maria was gone, Johnny asked Kathy if she wanted a piggyback ride, but Kathy said no. So they just sat there and waited for her friend to return.

By now, the snow was starting to fall, and Kathy was getting cold. So when Maria got back a few minutes later, Kathy looked at her and said, “Hey, now that you’re back from your house, I’m going to run home and get my mittens because my hands are cold. Can you come with me?”

Maria said, “No, I’ll just stay here.”

So Kathy goes home alone, and when she comes back.

I can’t listen to this.

When she comes back a few minutes later, Maria and the adult blonde Johnny man are gone.

So Kathy kind of wanders around for a bit outside. Remember, it’s getting dark, and she’s calling for Maria. Then she actually goes to the Rolph’s house and asks Maria’s 11-year-old brother, Chuck, for help.

She goes over and says, “Can you come help me look for your sister?” Now, Chuck knew this was not the first time that Maria had gone missing. She had also disappeared a year before while playing a game and turned up about an hour later. She was just out wandering.

So, Chuck, the 11-year-old, isn’t seriously worried. He’s like, “Oh my gosh, she’s done it again.” But when an hour had passed and they still hadn’t found her, he decides to finally go home and tell his parents, Francis and Mike, that his little sister Maria was playing with Kathy and went missing with an older man.

At about the same time, the Rolphs actually get a call from Kathy’s mother, who told them Kathy had seen Maria with a man named Johnny that night and now, apparently, she’s missing. So the parents learn from both parties that this is happening, and this is when the panic starts to set in.

So Francis called the police to report their daughter missing, and Mike organized a search party. Around 8:00 p.m., the search party went to a house a few blocks over that belonged to a man named Ralph Tessier. Now, Ralph was the owner of the local hardware store, and they wanted him to open the store so they could get some flashlights and lanterns.

Ralph said he’d be right there, and then he and his wife, Eileene, got ready to go. They were going to help search for this little girl, but before leaving, they did something unusual: they locked their front door, and they also locked the back, making sure no one could get in the house. They did this because they had younger kids, and now there’s a kid missing, so they were like, “We’re going to leave the kids home alone; we want the doors locked so they can stay safe.”

It’s like this panic around, but I do need to mention that the hardware store owners did have older kids, and not all of their kids were home that night because one was not home. He was 18 years old, had blonde hair, and his name was John.

What? Yep. So, John Tessier was born John Cherry in Belfast, Ireland, in 1939, and his mother, Eileene, whose maiden name was Mola, was married to a man who served in the British military during World War II.

When John was just 3 years old, his father died in combat, and Eileene, who also served as one of the first female searchlight operators in the Royal Air Force, ended up falling for an American soldier named Ralph Tessier.

Now, Ralph and Eileene were married November 18th, 1944, and when Ralph went back home to America to Sycamore in 1946, where the case is taking place, he took Eileene, their newborn daughter, and his now six-year-old stepson, John, with him.

So this is why they have young kids and older kids.

John Tessier, as we’ll call him for the rest of the episode, landed in the rural Midwest in 1946, and by most accounts, honestly, he never really fit in there. He didn’t connect with other kids while he was growing up in Sycamore. They didn’t understand why he spent so much time marching around in camouflage pants, waving a wooden sword, and it was because he was playing like he was in war.

These antics actually earned him the nickname “Commando.”

They actually labeled him a permanent outsider, like he came from a foreign land. But John didn’t really seem to care. According to people, he was something of a dreamer who preferred to live in his own world.

There was one thing about this world, however, that he really liked, and that was a particular American song. He loved When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Most of us have probably heard this.

Is it when the saints?

When the saints, when the saints go...

That's... that can’t be it. That’s got to be a different song.

Okay, I just played the song a little bit for you, as well as Garrett.

So, John liked this song because, as he said, his name is also Johnny, but he also idolized soldiers. One of his earliest memories, in fact, is his birth father in uniform, giving him a piggyback ride up the stairs. Now, John dreamed of being the celebrated soldier who came marching home.

But wanting a hero’s welcome doesn’t make you a hero.

When John was just 15 years old, he proved that he was far from his idol when he got expelled for physically assaulting a teacher at school. Now, the details of this incident have been lost to time, but it must have been pretty extreme because he never actually went back to school. He just kind of milled around town for a while, making a little money painting signs. Basically, he bided his time in town, now kicked out of school, until he could enlist in the military.

So, right after his 18th birthday, November 28th, 1957, John made an appointment with a military recruiter. They scheduled him a physical exam in Chicago on December 2nd, 1957. Now, on that day, Johnny marched in right on time, but he soon encountered the first major setback of his adult life. Doctors found a spot on his lung due to a childhood infection of tuberculosis.

So they tell him, “Hey, this disqualifies you from service.”

John is stunned. This is what he’s wanted to do his whole life, so he argued with the recruiters until they agreed to let him come back the next day and take the exam again. He comes back, and the doctors are like, “Nah, bro. The spot is still there,” and he is still disqualified.

So, John left the Chicago office with his dream in ruins.

It was about 12:00 p.m. on December 3rd, 1957, and back in Sycamore, on this exact day, Maria Ridulph was looking forward to the end of the school day. Clouds were gathering, and again, the first snow of the year was about to fall.

I mean, obviously, pieces are starting to fall together, make sense. I just don’t understand. I’m sure we’ll get to motive, it’s just confusing.

So, what happened next has been a matter of debate ever since, but there are a couple of pretty solid facts.

Number one, John leaves. He’s devastated because his dream of enlisting is crushed, and he wound up in a town called Rockford. It was about 45 miles from Sycamore and 90 miles from Chicago that night. Now, Sycamore is about halfway in between.

He actually placed a collect call from Rockford to his parents' house at 6:57 p.m. and then, between 7:15 and 7:30, he showed up to an Air Force recruitment office that had just closed for the evening.

He banged on the door until recruiters answered and begged them to take him despite the spot on his line. John was so worked up when he spoke to the recruiters that they actually thought he was on drugs, but they didn't turn him down. Instead, they said, "Hey, just come back in the morning."

This much of the story is verified, but the question remains: where was John that night before he got to Rockford? That evening, there’s a sliver of time between when he left the office and when he shows up at another recruiter’s office where he's missing, and that happens to be the same time when Maria disappears.

How did the police figure this out so fast? It seems like they knew exactly where to go.

I’m telling you a little ahead because I already know the killer, so I’m giving you the timeline. The police haven’t really discovered this yet. I’m just telling you after the fact, because even I mean, they went to somebody's house—his house—right away. They were asking, "Are his parents the owners of the local hardware store?" They said, "Hey, we need flashlights to search for her." Understand, they don’t actually know that he's involved or has anything to do with it.

Yes, Maria's parents and the search party are going to his parents and saying, "Hey, can you lend us some stuff to search?" So it’s all going to intertwine with each other.

Yes, and I’m just going to be honest right now. I just told you that there’s a chunk of time missing in his story, and that question would actually go on to be debated for the next 55 years. So this case is not solved right away.

Get out of here.

So by 8:00 p.m. on the night of December 3rd, all of Sycamore was searching for Maria. Police had set up roadblocks. They searched train cars, truck cabs, the bus station, and scoured buildings, houses, fields, and woods. No one found any sign of her. However, one searcher did find her doll in the alley behind Maria’s house. If you remember, she went to get that doll before her friend Kathy left, and she was alone with Johnny.

So they also had a description of the kidnapper because of Kathy. Kathy had told police that the man her friend was last seen with was blonde and went by the name Johnny. Naturally, they zeroed in on suspects who fit that description.

As early as the next day, word had gotten around that 18-year-old Johnny, this outcast in the community, was blonde, his name was John, and he went by Johnny. Police actually spoke to his mother, Eileen, on December 4th, the next day. They said, "Hey, we’re talking to anyone who’s blonde and fits this description. We know your son. Where was he last night?" Eileen was like, "He was home." This is obviously a lie because he wasn’t—he was going around to those offices. Her other kids had been there, but John hadn’t been there.

In fact, his half-siblings didn’t see him all that night or the following day. Some of Eileen’s daughters actually overheard their mother talking to police, and they knew she was lying. They actually tried to tell police, "Hey, we need to talk to you," but the cops didn’t even give them a chance.

They never end up talking to the other kids. They just took Eileen's word for it that her 18-year-old son had an alibi, and they moved on to the next blonde.

Crazy, right? Even crazier if she knows about it and just covers for her own kid.

Yeah, ironic.

This might not have been a result of negligence so much as a loss of jurisdiction. Because that same day, December 4th, 1957, the FBI moved in on the investigation. Twenty-nine federal agents showed up overnight and took over the investigation. They asked police for a list of suspects, and in a town where everybody knew everybody, the cops had their own ideas about who might have done this.

So they gave the FBI a list of known sexual deviants in the area. This included homosexuals, because it's 1957, okay? It also included peeping Toms, child molesters, and some of them were only known by nicknames. So there were a lot of people on this list. But a few days later, they actually got a tip from an anonymous person telling them to check out John Tresner in the nearby neighborhood for the case.

So the feds looked into it, and they found that John Tresner doesn’t exist, but they did find John Tessier, who fit Kathy's description of the kidnapper. So now the FBI was also on to 18-year-old John in a completely different way.

I don’t understand how he doesn’t get caught, either. Anyway, they ask John if he can come in and take a polygraph test, and John agrees. So, two days later, on December 10th, John was wired up and questioned. During the interview, agents asked John if he had ever had sex with children, and he said yes—sort of.

Wait, what?

He said that he had engaged in “sex play” with a young girl in the past, but that was years ago, and he's 18 now and has outgrown it.

What is this? This is insane.

He also lets them know, "Listen, I didn’t even know Maria. I really only met her once, four years ago. I'd helped her cross the street. We kind of lived in the same neighborhood, and I've never spoken to her again." He wasn't listing in the military that night, and the polygraph showed he was telling the truth.

So, between the test and his alibi, the FBI is like, “Hey, he’s cleared.” Once again, he’s cleared, just like the local police, and they move on.

Okay, and the next day, December 11th, 1957, John left home to actually join the Air Force. He was thrilled to be moving on.

As Christmas approached, Maria’s family wrapped gifts for her and put them under the tree—gifts they had already bought—but Maria was not home to open them. The holidays came and went, and with the dawn of the new year, it seemed like there was little to hope for. Months went by with no new leads, and then the trail went completely cold until one day in April 1958, in a wooded area 200 miles north of Sycamore, two hikers found a body.

I always think about this quite a bit for some of the cases we do where bodies have never been found.

They’ve got to be somewhere, right? Crazy how just years later, like hiking trails come up, or more houses are built, civilizations grow, lakes begin to drain, and all of a sudden, bodies are just found—yeah, that have been there for decades.

The remains they found that morning, April 28th, 1958, were half buried under a fallen tree. Again, this was 200 miles away from Sycamore. They were so decomposed that they weren’t obviously human, but the hikers were concerned enough to contact the local police. A coroner soon determined that the remains were human and belonged to a little girl. Now, dots were connected, and Maria's parents, Mike and Frances, were shown a scrap of clothing found on the body. They identified it as the shirt Maria was last seen wearing.

Soon, the body’s ID was confirmed through dental records, and it was the Rids' worst fear—it was Maria. So, now, even though they knew that Maria was dead, there were still a lot of unanswered questions. How did her body get 200 miles away from home? Who had brought her there? How did she die? Sadly, investigators failed to provide any answers. They didn’t take photos at the crime scene, nor did they determine an exact cause of death. The autopsy just said "suspected foul play" because they were just over the case. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t have enough information or didn’t even know if the bones were human at the time.

If this wasn’t upsetting enough, the FBI had bowed out of the investigation at this point. Since Maria’s body had been found within the state, the case no longer fell under their jurisdiction. They turned it back over to the Illinois State Police, who, after two years of going over the same leads—or lack thereof—moved it into cold cases once again.

By the time Maria’s body had been found, John was starting his new life. He served several years in the Air Force and then transferred to the Army. Presumably, that spot on his lung wasn’t such a big deal when the U.S. finally needed soldiers for Vietnam. So, John went on to fight in the Vietnam War. He was awarded three bronze stars for exceptional bravery in a combat zone. He was honorably discharged, got married, and had two kids. He then attended the Law Enforcement Academy in King County, Washington. By the time he graduated in 1974 at the age of 35, John was basically the hero he always wanted to be.

But to those who knew him, there were signs that he was not the noble soldier he pretended to be on the outside. John’s first marriage ended when he cheated on his wife. Once he became a police officer, he used his badge to pick up multiple women. For example, he once arrested a woman for drunk driving and then talked her into moving in with him. He also arrested a sex worker and then took her to a holiday party—after he arrested her. After several incidents like this, John was reprimanded by the chief of police in Milton, Washington.

But he continued to work for the Milton Police Department until the early '80s, when his behavior went from questionable to criminal. In 1981, 42-year-old John, who was still a police officer, invited 15-year-old runaway Michelle Wyman to move in with him. He came across her as a cop—she was a runaway—and he said, "Why don’t you just live with me? You have nowhere to live." So he posed as a protector, but he’d always been a pedophile.

He buys her clothes. He teaches her how to put makeup on. He makes sure she goes to school. But then, one night, after she'd been staying with him for just a few weeks, Michelle woke up on the side of the bed in John's living room to find him performing oral sex on her. She's 15, he's 42. She was so scared she just froze. But the next day, she told a friend what had happened to her, and the friend told a school counselor. The counselor alerted police in another town, and this led to an investigation in which John was eventually charged with statutory rape.

Now, remember 25 years earlier, John had admitted to the FBI, right after Maria went missing, that he had engaged in sexual activity with children. But apparently, no one now in Washington knew about this confession, or knew that he had been somewhat of a suspect back then. This is wild. So, John was actually allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of communication with a minor for immoral purposes.

Wait, wait, yes. How does that even happen? How do you go from honestly, I don't even think you need a history with a kid to communicating with a minor?

He wasn't fired from the police department. He was asked to resign, which meant he was free to keep on reinventing himself. So, he leaves the police department, starts pursuing a business in photography, and begins taking photos of children—young aspiring models. In 1983, he marries one of them, a woman named Denise Trexler.

Denise was coming out of an abusive relationship. He pretended to be her hero once again, but after they married, he became emotionally abusive and controlling. He didn't just buy Denise clothes. He was telling her what to wear. He didn't just teach her how to put on makeup. He made her do it a certain way. Denise stayed with him, and during that time, she witnessed at least two things that would haunt her for years to come. One happened on a day when John's daughter from his first marriage came to visit. She was only 12 years old. Denise found John with her one morning in the kitchen, and he was holding a banana.

The second incident was even more disturbing. One day, Denise was looking for something in John's desk, and she felt a drawer catching. So, she lifted it up and found something taped to the bottom of his drawer in his office. It was a photo John had taken of his daughter. She was naked—his 12-year-old daughter.

Oh my God. He's just a straight-up... I mean, he's a pervert. He's a pedophile.

Yes. So, Denise and John break up in 1989, and unfortunately, she didn't report any of these things for years to come.

There better not be any pedophiles listening to this podcast. Turn it off right now, go get help. Don't—don't go get help. Put him in prison. Let other people take care of the issue, and bada bing, bada boom.

So, John keeps moving. His photography business never made enough to actually pay the bills. So, in the early '90s, John got a job driving for a limo company in Seattle, and he hooks up with the owner's daughter, Sue. In 1993, he proposes. Sue accepts, but before they get married, John made an interesting move. He told Sue he wanted to change his name from John Tessier to John Mola.

Now, if you remember, that's his mother's maiden name. He said he wanted to honor his mother, and maybe that's true. But it's also possible that John had an ulterior motive. By now, he was 54 years old, getting ready to settle down. Maybe he wanted to put some distance between himself and his sordid past. If so, John was about to be disappointed, because while he was getting ready to start another new life in Seattle, back in Sycamore, his mom Eileen's life was coming to an end, and she was about to blow the past on her son's life wide open.

But also, remember when you were like, "If she knew this whole time and didn't, knew the entire time"? Didn't she? Oh yeah, and it finally caught up to her. She's dying, and she's thinking, "I'll say something now. I have to tell the truth," which, you know what? Screw you. I'm sorry. I don't feel bad. That's ridiculous.

Since Maria Ridulph's disappearance in 1957, Ralph and Eileen Tessier had remained in Sycamore, but their children had mostly gone their separate ways. One who remained in her parents' orbit, however, was their daughter Janet. Janet had only been a year older than Maria when Maria disappeared, but she felt like she lived her whole life under the shadow of that kidnapping, of that trauma. She grew up with a kind of constant low-grade fear, and that anxiety extended to relationships with her family. It wasn't just her family—she felt like her DNA was screwed up. She would tell people, "I just break everything I touch."

Now, despite this black sheep status—or maybe because of it—when Janet's mother Eileen got cancer in the early '90s, Janet became one of her caretakers. One day in late 1993, Janet was staying with her mother when, all of a sudden, Eileen, her mother, is calling her name. Janet rushes to her mother's bedside, concerned by the urgency in Eileen's voice. She suddenly felt her mom's hand clamp down on her wrist, and Eileen pulled Janet close. She said, "Those two little girls, and the one that disappeared. John did it. John did it. And you have to tell someone."

What the freak? Janet is shocked, because right away, she knows that her mom is talking about Maria Ridulph. You have to imagine—it’s her daughter, too, who became terrified of being kidnapped. When I heard about Elizabeth Smart, who lived an entire state away from me, imagine a girl you knew, who was just a year younger than you, who lived in your neighborhood, going missing. Oh yeah, she's terrified by this. And now her mom is telling her that, hey, all these years you've lived in fear and worried about this girl, it was your brother—step, I don't know, whatever you want to call it.

She was so rattled by her mom's tone that she didn't even know how to respond. She just told her mom, "Okay, don't worry. I'll take care of it." Then Eileen fell back against the pillow, and it looked like, to Janet, a huge burden had just been lifted off her mother. A few weeks later, on January 23rd, 1994, Eileen passed away. Janet's like, "Okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go to the police and tell them what my mom said." She knew beyond a doubt that her mother was telling the truth. Again, she thinks her family's messed up. She wanted to fulfill her promise by convincing officials to reopen the case and look into her brother.

Now, that turned out to be a lot more difficult than Janet imagined. She started by calling the Sycamore police, telling them, "I have a lead in this murder kidnapping," and Sycamore PD gave her the runaround. So, she tries calling the FBI in Chicago, and they're like, "No, you need to call Sycamore." So, she tries Sycamore again, and literally no one will listen to her. For years, nothing happens. Then, one day in October 1997, a detective named Patrick Solar, who had recently graduated from the FBI Academy, announces to the media that he had solved the case using an FBI offender database. Patrick had connected Maria's murder to a string of similar crimes committed by a transient truck driver in the '50s. This truck driver apparently resembled Kathy's description of Johnny from that day, and he's dead now, so there's no trial, no further investigation—case closed.

Janet's like, "No, there's absolutely no way this case is closed." For years, she's like, "How did I have this wrong? How did my mom have this wrong?" No. And so, Janet also remembers, "Hey, me and my siblings clearly remember my mother lying to the police that night, and we thought it was strange, and we were going to tell them, but then we never got a chance to talk to them, and we were just like, okay."

So finally, in 2007, half a century after Maria's disappearance, Janet met a true crime author who'd written a book about a cold case. She couldn't help asking, "Hey, how do you go about reopening a case?" The author is like, "Listen, you just need to find the right investigator who's ready to look into this, and they'll reopen it. Yeah, someone who wouldn't give up." So after all her years of effort, Janet wasn't sure that person existed in Sycamore, but she decided to give it a try. In September 2008, Janet sent an email to the Illinois State Police. It said:

"Sycamore, Illinois, December 1957. A 7-year-old child named Maria Ridulph vanished. Her remains were found in another county, several miles away. I still believe that John Samuel Tessier was and is responsible for her death, and this is the last time I'm going to mention it to anyone."

So she's like, "I'm done. I'm done trying. I'm going to send one last email, and I'm going to relieve this weight." But this time, it worked. A commander in the Illinois State Police called her after reading her email, and he's like, "Hey, I'm going to put one of my detectives on this." She was like, "Okay, maybe this is a sign. Maybe I'm fulfilling my mother's dying wish."

So after that conversation between Janet Tessier and the commander in the Illinois State Police, two new detectives were assigned to the cold case. Their first step was to re-interview witnesses. They started with Janet and her siblings because, if you remember, in the case notes, it shows that they had talked to her brother twice. So they talked to Janet and her siblings, and they find some eye-opening information. They learned that all of the kids knew their mother had lied to the police, and they also heard other disturbing things, such as that John had actually sexually abused one of his sisters.

Upon interviewing other witnesses, detectives also learned that there were contradictions in his timeline. Early reports estimated the time of disappearance at 7:00 p.m. However, witnesses are like, "No, it actually happened between 5:50 and 6:20." So John being somewhere and then being somewhere else doesn't really matter because that time frame could still be there. He could have kidnapped Maria at 6:15, killed her, and then gotten into Rockford by 7:00 to make that call at home.

Detectives knew they were on to something, but they needed more. So, in September of 2010, they tracked down Maria's old friend Kathy, which was probably absolutely insane to her. They showed her a series of photos and asked, "Hey, we've reopened the case. We have some photos from back in that time. Do any of these men look like the guy?" She's now 61 years old. She looks at all the pictures and points to John Tessier and says, "That's him. That's the guy who took her."

Holy crap. By now, John was going by Jack. He was 71 years old, living in Seattle with his wife, Sue. He worked as a night watchman for an upscale retirement home. One morning, after his shift, the Illinois State Police detectives approached him, along with a couple of colleagues from Seattle PD. They told John, "Hey, we need your assistance on a break-in that happened at a building where you work." John was like, "Okay," but when they got him to the police station, they said, "Actually, we want to discuss this little girl who went missing years ago when you were just 18 years old."

They conducted an 8-hour interrogation during which John not only admitted to knowing Maria, but he actually expressed a kind of... well, concern for her. He said, "She's lovely. She was so lovely. She looked like a little Barbie doll."

What? That's so disgusting. That is so gross. Man, he never can... get out of here.

He didn't confess to kidnapping or murdering her, but prosecutors who reviewed the tape were certain he was guilty. On July 1st, 2011, John was arrested and charged with kidnapping and murder. He was transported to Sycamore. The judge understood the gravity of the case and said, "Listen, this is a trial that this community has wanted for 55 years. This was such a big deal."

He made the rules clear up front. He said, "Hearsay evidence is inadmissible." This meant FBI documents from the first investigation couldn't be used in trial because the agents who created them were dead. You had to have actual first-person testimony. But this was actually a blow to the defense, as it meant they couldn't use the report that stated John had been interviewed and cleared back then.

Meanwhile, the prosecution had their own concerns. They had zero physical evidence—no DNA, no weapon. Even Maria's doll had been lost in evidence in the past 50 years. So this entire case hinged on witness testimony, and that was Kathy, who was there when her friend was kidnapped. Luckily, he was found guilty. The people in this community finally had the answers they'd been seeking for over 50 years.

So, after the conviction, John, now 73, was sentenced to life in prison. But his wife and stepdaughter continued to believe he was innocent. Oh, they were like, "We've never seen him be abusive or show interest in young girls," and they believed he'd been given an unfair trial. In 2015, his daughter succeeded in convincing State Attorney Richard Schmack to review the case. Richard went back to the original FBI files—the ones that weren't admitted during the trial. He disregarded witness statements indicating that Maria was abducted at an earlier time, and he's like, "This time that they first were told was 7:00 p.m., and if that's true, we know that John couldn't have done this because he was calling home."

Oh my gosh.

So he's like, "John was wrongfully convicted." Richard sent John's case to a different judge who agreed with him, and on April 15, 2016, that judge vacated the conviction and declared John innocent of Maria's murder.

What the...

So only 4 years after this community thought the case was closed, it was open again. According to reporters, Maria's family showed little emotion after this verdict. Probably not a big surprise—they knew the world could be a terrible place. And as of this recording, John Tessier is still alive and still free.

He is still a pervert. That's not up for debate. There was a picture of his daughter naked. He raped a 15-year-old girl. Insane, at 42 years old, and they're like, "Oh, I don't think he could have done it." Get out of here, man. He was literally charged. I mean, all of you... you suck.

Maria Ridulph's case remains unsolved. I mean, like, it's officially unsolved. Officially unsolved. So, allegedly, every single one of us listening to this knows it is solved, and justice has not been served. Not allegedly did John rape a 15-year-old girl, but allegedly he murdered Maria back then. Insane. And that is the case of Maria Ridulph.

Honestly, gross. I don't know... I mean, I guess we don't have all of the information because why do some people say the girls were playing at 5 and some people say they were playing at 7? I'm really confused on how that was even... because it was 1957. No offense, right? Just saying. Either way, this man still is a pedophile.

Yeah, so I mean, it's a tough case, though. I mean, legally, is it just a case where there's not enough evidence? Do they have the wrong person? No. I mean, why did his mother lie to the police and then tell the daughter that he did it? Why would she even have lied for him the next day? And Maria was found 200 miles away, so that didn't happen that night—she was dumped later, in my opinion, if it was John.

Alright, you guys, that is our case, and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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