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 71-year-old Seattle man living under an assumed name has been arrested in Washington in connection with the 1957 kidnapping and murder of a 7-year-old Illinois girl, authorities said Friday. The disappearance of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph while playing in the town of Sycamore, west of Chicago, captured national headlines and the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, according to news accounts published at the time. Jack Daniel McCullough, who also used the name John Tessier, was arrested by Seattle authorities on murder charges filed in DeKalb County, Illinois, the DeKalb County State's Attorney Clay...