Ex-cop says he didn't kill 7-year-old girl in 1957

A former police officer from the Seattle area denies that he abducted and killed a 7-year-old girl from Sycamore in 1957.

Jack Daniel McCullough, who has been charged with murder in the case, said in an interview Thursday night that he had a solid alibi and that he would be found not guilty.

"I'm going to get off in a heartbeat," he said. "I got a checkered past, but I didn't commit a murder…I want justice for her.  I want whoever did this strung up."

McCullough, 71, denied his involvement in the crime during an interview with the Tribune in the King County Corrections Facility in downtown Seattle where he is being held in lieu of $3 million bail.

McCullough was charged with the murder of the girl last week in Seattle after police said new evidence undermined his alibi.

McCullough said he remembered the victim well.  Maria Ridulph, he said, lived a few blocks from the home where McCullough then lived his parents.  At that time, his name was John Tessier.

"She had big brown eyes," he recalled. "A little doll. She was adorable."

"I was a kid going nowhere when I left Sycamore," he said.

Maria was abducted by a man who called himself Johnny on the night of Dec. 3, 1957.  She and a friend had been playing outside their home at the time.  Maria's body was found nearly five months later about 100 miles west of Sycamore.

McCullough said that on the day the child was abducted he was undergoing tests to join the military.

Police have said that McCullough told them he was on a train traveling from Rockford to Chicago to take a physical exam.   McCullough claimed during an interview that he had been given a train ticket from Rockford to Chicago and that is how he got there, according to an investigative report.

That report also said McCullough told authorities he had been given a slip of paper to take to his recruiter in Rockford after he was dismissed from his examination on the morning of Dec. 3.

A former girl friend later told authorities that she discovered an unused train ticket from Rockford to Chicago that the suspect had given her from the date of the crime.

During his interview with the Tribune, McCullough said that Army had given him the train ticket but that he didn't need it.    He said his father drove him to Chicago.

"It was a grueling day," he said. "There were psych tests, security tests, all kinds of medical things. It was an 8-hour day, and I was worn out."

"There should be a record of the phone call at 7 p.m. to have my dad come pick me up," McCullough added. "But my dad was helping my sister with 4H or something."

Instead, McCullough said he hitched a ride home.

The day after the girl disappeared, McCullough said he helped with the search.

"That the next day I went out and helped people search for criminals," he said.

His family moved to Sycamore when he was 7, McCullough said.

He said he was kicked out of high school junior year because he insulted a teacher.

"I was a kid going nowhere when I left Sycamore," he said.

McCullough said he has been married four times and has two children.  He has two sisters, but is no longer in touch with them, he said.

"My sister said that my mother on her deathbed said that she thought I did it," he said. He paused. "We're not going there."

McCullough was a former police officer for the cities of Lacey and Milton inWashington.

He was fired from the Milton force after pleading guilty to an unlawful communication charge following sexual abuse accusations involving a teenage runaway girl in 1983.

During his interview, he refused to discuss that case.

"This isn't about that," he said. "This is about the murder."

McCullough also said that he recently called the FBI because he had a dream about a man in the Sycamore neighborhood, a man he says he was certain had murdered Maria.

This detail couldn't be confirmed, but McCullough said after the call, authorities focused on him.

"I used to love cops and now I hate them," he said.  "I would investigate, not start accusing.  You gotta have evidence.  They have nothing."

McCullough said he was born John Cherry in Belfast, Ireland and moved to London when he was three. He was devoted to his mother but doesn't remember his father.

His mother, he said, was a corporal in the Royal Air Force and secured a job as a search light operator.

She met the man who McCullough would later refer to as his father, he said. That was the first time McCullough changed his name – to John Tessier -- to honor his stepfather's role in his life, he said.

After leaving Sycamore, McCullough said he joined the Air Force and four years later switched to the Army.

He said he spent 1969 and 1970 in Vietnam, he said, before being transferred to Fort Lewis, in western Washington State. Over six years, he said he was promoted to captain.

McCullough said he also spent two years in Japan and says that he speaks fluent Japanese.

He said that he has been married to his wife, Sue McCullough, for about 16 years.

Sue McCullough has taken over his job as the security guard for their building at Four Freedoms, an apartment complex for people over 55 in the north-end of Seattle, he said.  Before his arrest, McCullough also worked there.

As a former police officer suspected of murdering a child, McCullough said he would be vulnerable in the general population.

McCullough said that his wife believes him but that she cries a lot.  He never told her that he had been suspect in the Sycamore case, he said.
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