Court papers: Retired cop held in 1957 killing had troubling history

The 71-year-old Seattle man arrested last week in connection with the 1957 murder of a 7-year-old Illinois girl has a history of sexually abusing young girls, according to documents filed in King County District Court.

Jack Daniels McCullough, a former policeman in two Western Washington cities, was arrested Wednesday at his home. He did not attend a court hearing Saturday at the King County Jail because he is in the hospital, said Judge Eileen Kato. A bail hearing was rescheduled for Monday.

A woman who said she is McCullough's niece attended the hearing along with three other family members. She said she loves her uncle and his arrest was "a tragedy all the way around."

"My uncle is a wonderful and kind and loving person, and that's all I know," she said.

The affidavit of probable cause, however, paints a picture of a man who, when he was growing up, allegedly molested a female relative as well as girls who lived in his neighborhood in the town of Sycamore, Ill., about 70 miles west of Chicago.

After he moved to Washington state as an adult, the papers also say he was fired from the Milton Police Department after he was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage runaway and pleaded guilty to unlawful communication with a minor.

A former wife told authorities that McCullough took nude photos of women for a photography business that didn't seem to make any money, and that she found nude photos of a young female relative taped to the bottom of a drawer, the papers said.

The affidavit was supposed to be sealed, a King County District Court clerk said Friday. However, the document was available online Saturday.

McCullough also worked at the Lacey Police Department, according to the affidavit. Most recently he has been working as a night watchman at a retirement home in North Seattle where he lives with his wife.

McCullough was a suspect in 1957 when Maria Ridulph, 7, disappeared from a Sycamore street about a block from where McCullough lived with his family. He was 18 at the time and fit the description of the young man who approached Ridulph and an 8-year-old friend as they played outside near their homes.

The man, who called himself "Johnny," offered to give them piggyback rides. Maria agreed, the papers said. Her friend left to get mittens, and when she returned, the man and Maria were gone.

The case shocked the community and the nation. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Eisenhower both took an active interest in the case, according to reports.

Maria's body was found five months later about 120 miles away, by two people foraging for mushrooms.

McCullough, then known as John Tessier, told authorities that on the day Maria disappeared he was in Chicago getting a physical and then in Rockford, Ill., trying to turn in a medical report to a military recruiting station there. He said his father picked him up in Rockford that evening, and he didn't get back to Sycamore until 9:20 p.m.

He joined the Air Force shortly after, court papers said.

That alibi stood for more than 50 years. It started to unravel last year when detectives contacted a former girlfriend and asked whether she had old photographs of the two of them. When she pulled one out of a frame, court papers said, she discovered an unused train ticket from the day of the crime, according to the affidavit.

McCullough is currently being held in lieu of $3 million bail in King County Jail on murder charges out of DeKalb County, Ill.

Outside the jail on Saturday, a man who said he was dating one of McCullough's relatives said McCullough had triple-bypass surgery a few years ago.

In court, Judge Kato said McCullough was in Harborview Medical Center, but a nursing supervisor said Saturday that she had no patient by that name or his former name. Kato did not say why McCullough was in the hospital.

The DeKalb County state's attorney, in a statement, said he plans to extradite McCullough to Illinois.

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com

Information from Seattle Times archives is included in this report.