Free Republic

It is a mystery that has haunted a Chicago suburb for more than a half century. A little girl was found murdered, and the only suspect in the case had gone free, until now. CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports that police went to great lengths to try to close this cold case. For 53 years, the grave of seven-year-old Maria Ridulph was undisturbed. Her unsolved murder case as cold as the ground that held her coffin. On Wednesday morning, however, her remains were exhumed to see if modern science - and DNA - can support the authorities' belief that...

SYCAMORE, Ill. (AP) — Charles "Chuck" Ridulph always assumed the person who stole his little sister from the neighborhood corner where she played and dumped her body in a wooded stretch some 100 miles away was a trucker or passing stranger — surely not anyone from the hometown he remembers as one big, friendly playground. And, after more than a half century passed since her death, he assumed the culprit also had died or was in prison for some other crime. On Saturday, he said he was stunned by the news that a one-time neighbor had been charged in the...

A man has been charged with the killing of a seven-year-old girl 53 YEARS after she was abducted in a case that gripped America. Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, is accused of murdering Maria Ridulph, who was kidnapped while playing with a friend near her home. As almost an entire community and law enforcement agencies searched for her, President Eisenhower and FBI director J Edgar Hoover demanded daily briefings on the hunt. McCullough, from Seattle, is being held at Washington's King County jail today awaiting extradition after being picked up for questioning last Wednesday. The crime has haunted the city of...