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The coldest case ever solved
Maria Ridulph was 7 when she was kidnapped from a street corner
in Sycamore, Illinois, onDecember 3, 1957. Her murder went unsolved
for half a century.Photo: Family photo courtesyChicago
Sun-Times
Maria was the pretty one, slight and graceful at 7 with big
brown eyes that shined with warmth andintelligence. Everyone said
the second-grader was special and Kathy, who was a year older,
felthonored to be her friend.
They lived a few doors away from each other on a side street
called Archie Place. It was their wholeworld in 1957, a time when
children played hide-and-seek outside instead of watching
television.People didn't lock their doors in this Midwestern farm
town because everyone knew everybody else.
Sycamore and its 7,000 souls felt safe on the morning of
December 3, 1957, but the feeling wouldn'tlast.
That first Tuesday in December started like any other for Maria
Ridulph and Kathy Sigman, with ashort walk across the street to
West Elementary School. It was cold, with a promise of snow in
theair. After school, they went to Maria's house to cut out paper
snowflakes.
A few blocks away, a man in an overcoat spotted two other girls
walking along State Street by thepublic library and tried to strike
up a conversation. It was 4:15 p.m. The girls felt uneasy, so
theyducked into a restaurant. When they emerged, the man was gone
-- but he'd left somethingdisturbing behind. Scattered on the
sidewalk were half a dozen photographs of nude women.
That wasn't Sycamore's only peculiar hint of the dirty and
forbidden. Since Halloween, someone hadbeen scrawling obscenities
in chalk on a tree and stop sign at the intersection of Center
Cross Streetand Archie Place. Maria and Kathy made plans to play
there after dinner. It was a favorite spot theyhadn't been to since
summer.
At 5 p.m. sharp, Kathy went home. Maria's family gathered around
the table for her favorite supper:rabbit, carrots, potatoes and
milk. She finished off two rabbit legs, but barely touched
hervegetables. She pleaded to go back outside as the first flurries
of the season started to swirl in thenight sky.
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Excited, she called Kathy on the phone: I can go outside
tonight, can you?
Kathy lived in a white cottage at the end of a long driveway,
and her family was the first on the blockto own a clothes dryer.
Her freshly laundered jeans still felt warm as she met Maria at
mid-block andthey raced in the dark to the massive elm tree on the
corner. They were playing "duck the cars" --scurrying back and
forth between the tree and a street pole, trying to avoid the
headlights fromoncoming cars -- when a good-looking young man
approached. He wore his blond hair swept back ina ducktail. Kathy
remembers his narrow face, big teeth and high, thin voice. She'd
never seen himbefore.
Hello, little girls, he said. Are you having fun?
He asked whether they wanted piggyback rides and gave his name
as "Johnny." He told Kathy andMaria that he was 24 and wasn't
married.
Do you like dollies?
The girls nodded.
A trial exhibit shows Kathy Sigman with the mittens she fetched
from home; when she returned tothe corner, Maria was gone.Photo:
Court exhibit/Jessica Koscielniak/Getty Images for CNN
By the time these events were recalled in a Sycamore courtroom
55 years later, memories had fadedand many details noted in police
and FBI reports were lost to time.
But nobody could forget the piggyback ride. That was how Johnny
won Maria over.
Down he trotted, 20 feet to the south along Center Cross Street
and back again, Maria giggling withglee on his shoulders. When it
was over, she ran to her house, three doors away at 616 Archie
Place,to fetch a doll for the next piggyback ride.
Kathy waited on the sidewalk with Johnny. He asked whether she
wanted to take a walk around the
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block or go on a trip in a truck, car or bus. No, she told him.
He told her she was pretty, but shesensed it was Maria he liked
more.
Maria burst into her house to find her father, Michael, in the
living room watching a Western. Hermother, Frances, was reading a
newspaper. Maria picked out a favorite doll from the toys piled
bythe door, but her mother suggested she take an older rubber doll
out into the snow instead.
Kathy felt a chill as Maria joined them on the sidewalk. Now it
was Kathy's turn to run home, tofetch her mittens. She asked Maria
to come along, but she didn't want to go.
When Kathy returned a few minutes later, Maria and Johnny were
gone.
The trouble with cold cases
The kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph is the nation's
oldest cold case to go to trial. Itrequired family members to turn
against one of their own and haunted a small town for 55 years.Even
now, the case may not be over.
Maria was taken in a more innocent time -- decades before Amber
Alerts and photos of missingchildren on milk cartons became part of
our cultural landscape. In 1957, the kidnapping of a littlegirl
shattered everyone's sense of safety. It was huge news.
Reporters flocked to Sycamore from the big city papers in
Chicago and New York and from thefledgling television networks. FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover demanded daily updates from his menand
sent teletypes with detailed instructions. President Dwight D.
Eisenhower followed the case. Butthe weeks of urgent activity were
followed by half a century of silence.
Secrets often lie at the heart of crimes that remain unsolved so
long they are said to go "cold." Mostare cracked by advances in
science, or by someone's need to come clean.
In the Ridulph case, there was no DNA, no confession by the
killer. This mystery was solved bycircumstantial evidence amassed
over four years by bulldog cops and other outsiders who came
toSycamore to stand up for a little girl whose life was stolen.
But it is difficult to reconstruct the past in a courtroom.
People die, memories fade and facts canbecome distorted by the
passage of time or shaded by personal grudges and agendas.
As tough as it is to build a cold case, it may be even harder to
defend one. Imagine trying to explainwhat you were doing a year
ago. Now imagine trying to explain what you were doing a lifetime
ago.
The man convicted last September of kidnapping and murdering
Maria Ridulph maintains hisinnocence. His wife of nearly 20 years
and his stepdaughter say he was sacrificed to bring peace ofmind to
Sycamore. An appeal has been filed and likely will take two years
or more to be heard.
Winning a conviction in a crime that occurred in 1957 is a
remarkable accomplishment - proof thatno one should get away with
murder, even if justice takes 55 years. But a close examination of
thecase by CNN raises questions about the strength of the evidence,
the motives of some of thewitnesses and the ability of the court
system to fairly and accurately reconstruct history.
The case was reopened after a dying woman implicated her own son
36 years after the fact. Herwords, as recalled by two of her
daughters, were somewhat cryptic, and there's no way to seek
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clarification. Even the daughters don't agree on what she said.
And, separate from this crime, twosiblings had powerful reasons to
fear and despise their half brother.
Much of the physical evidence in the case was lost or destroyed
over the years, including Maria'sdoll, which was handled by her
killer. Instead, prosecutors relied heavily on evidence that in the
pasthas often proven unreliable: eyewitness identification and the
testimony of informants.
Eyewitness identification is not as simple as it might seem.
Factors influencing misidentificationinclude the witness's distance
from the perpetrator, the lighting at the crime scene and
theconditions under which a witness later views a lineup. Jailhouse
informants bring their own baggage:They're criminals, or at least
accused of crimes, and can be looking to trade testimony for
leniency.
In the Ridulph case, three inmates locked up with the suspect
told different stories about how hedescribed killing Maria: by
dropping her on her head, or by suffocating or strangling her
whiletrying to silence her cries.
Yet a forensic pathologist testified Maria was stabbed.
The eyewitness whose testimony was crucial in winning a
conviction was a child when she saw thekidnapper for just a few
moments. More than half a century passed before she picked him out
in aphoto lineup. She is certain she chose the right man, but
others question whether she picked upcues from the investigators
and tried to please them with her choice. They wonder whether
thephoto itself -- slightly different from the others she was shown
-- could have prejudiced her.
Illinois is second only to Texas in mistaken eyewitness
identifications, according to the InnocenceProject, which began its
work in 1992. Faulty identifications played a role in 24 cases -
more thanhalf of the state's 43 wrongful convictions later
overturned by DNA evidence. Nationwide, 75% of309 wrongful
convictions involved faulty eyewitness identifications; 15% were
based partly on thetestimony of informants who later recanted or
were proven to have lied.
The case caught the attention of the FBI and President Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
It was the job of Judge James Hallock to sort everything out.
The defense requested a bench trial,and so prosecutors had to prove
guilt to just one person, not 12. That one person, Hallock, had
littleexperience with murder trials.
Hallock's verdict in this case came after four days of
testimony. It was based, the judge said, on thecredibility of the
eyewitness and the jailhouse informants.
He expressed confidence that his decision would be upheld on
appeal.
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The goal in every trial is a fair hearing of both sides. And in
most trials, witnesses take the stand torecount what they saw with
their own eyes, what they heard with their own ears. But in cold
cases,those witnesses often are dead.
When that's true, prosecutors and defendants are sometimes
forced to rely on second-hand evidenceknown as hearsay. And in some
states, including Illinois, the law is evolving to allow
hearsayevidence under exceptional circumstances.
In this cold case, a hearsay statement that favored the
prosecution was allowed into evidence; otherhearsay evidence that
favored the defense was kept out. And so, a mother was able to
accuse herson from the grave, but his alibi, buried in thousands of
pages of old FBI reports, was neverpresented in court.
A man was convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life.
A victim's family embraced long-awaited justice, and Sycamore
breathed a sigh of relief. But was the courtroom reconstruction
ofhistory unfairly one-sided?
Was justice really served?
A trial exhibit shows the crime scene as it appeared in 1957.
Blacked out are the names of theselocations: Left, the garage where
Maria's doll was found; center, the elm tree on the corner whereshe
was playing; right, Maria's house on Archie Place. Photo: Court
exhibit/Jessica Koscielniak/GettyImages for CNN
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'I can't find Maria!'
"Mah-reeeee-ah!"
Kathy ran up and down Archie Place, calling her best friend's
name as a gentle snow fell on theevening of December 3, 1957. There
was no sign of Maria.
Kathy rushed up to a side door at the Ridulphs' house, where
Maria's big brother, Chuck, wasspinning records on the hi-fi with
his friend Randy. Maria's lost, she told them. I can't find
Maria!
Chuck and Randy set out down Archie Place, all the way to the
corner of Fair Street, by theelementary school. The boys saw a
police car go by and realized - too late - that they should
havestopped it. They headed back home.
By then, Kathy had told her mother about the nice man who called
himself Johnny. More detailsemerged as Maria's mother, Frances, and
Kathy's mother, Flora, exchanged several frantic phonecalls.
The doll Maria was carrying when she disappeared, held by police
magistrate Arthur Ayers, isamong the evidence that has been lost
over the years.Photo: Chicago Sun-Times
Maria's father was reluctant to summon police because he didn't
want to be embarrassed if she hadjust wandered off. About a year
earlier, Maria had strayed several blocks away to ElmwoodCemetery
while playing. She turned up just as a search party organized.
But Frances Ridulph let worry overrule her husband. She drove to
the Sycamore police station toreport her daughter missing. It was
8:10 p.m.
Chuck continued looking for Maria, but the 11-year-old wasn't
yet sure how concerned he should beabout the little sister he
walked to school every morning. He traipsed down a long driveway
andthrough a garden that opened onto a field. Then he circled back
to the alley that ran behind theirhome, where a sense of foreboding
overcame him. There, next to Ida Johnson's garage, a
searcherspotted Maria's doll.
That evening, men pounded on the door of 227 Center Cross
Street, the home of Ralph and Eileen
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Tessier. Ralph ran the hardware store, and the men wanted him to
open up so they could gather upflashlights and lanterns to use in
the search.
The Tessiers were a large family crammed into small quarters
about two blocks from the Ridulphs.Eileen was Ralph's Irish-born
war bride who'd sailed to the United States on the Queen Mary
withher son John from an earlier marriage. Together the couple
would have six children: Katheran,Jeanne, Mary Pat, Bob, Janet and
Nancy.
The girls resented the way their mother seemed to favor John. At
18, he was artistic, a bit of adreamer. He seemed to get a pass
with her even when he screwed up. He was expelled for pushing
ateacher and calling her an unsavory name. But in their mother's
eyes, he could do no wrong.
Ralph Tessier, who had just arrived home from picking up
12-year-old Katheran at a 4-H social,joined the men in the search
that night. Eileen headed to the armory, where the women weremaking
sandwiches and coffee for the searchers. Before they left, the
couple locked the front door,even though the key had been lost for
years. The back door didn't lock at all, so Ralph jammed itshut
with a board.
The girls huddled with Bob inside; they'd have to let their
parents back in when they returned.
They said they saw no sign of John.
In the days to come, police would knock on the door and question
Eileen Tessier about the events ofDecember 3. The older girls stood
back and listened as their mother told the officers something
theyknew wasn't true: John was home all night.
'I know she is still alive'
The headline on the front page of Sycamore's afternoon paper
screamed the bad news thateverybody in town already knew: "Missing
Girl, 7, Feared Kidnapped."
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Police stopped and searched every car that entered and left
Sycamore in the days after thekidnapping.Photo: Chicago
Sun-Times
Foul play was suspected, but there were no clues. When she
vanished, the newspaper said, Mariawas wearing a brown,
three-quarter-length coat, black corduroy slacks, brown socks and
freshlypolished saddle shoes. She was 43 inches tall, weighed about
55 pounds, and wore her hair in awavy brown bob with bangs.
The man who called himself Johnny, police said, wore a striped
sweater of blue, yellow and green.He had long, blond hair that
curled in the front and flopped onto his forehead.
Already, there were conflicting reports about the exact time of
Maria's disappearance. Was shesnatched closer to 6 p.m.? Or did it
happen later, at about 7? Police and FBI reports, as well as
newsaccounts from the time, contain details that support both
scenarios.
Sycamore's police chief, William Hindenburg, told FBI agents
that Kathy and Maria went out to playat 6:02 p.m., but the DeKalb
County sheriff said Maria didn't call Kathy and ask her to come out
andplay until 6:30. Maria's mother later altered her original
estimate, saying the girls could have beenoutside as early as 10
minutes to 6.
When the case was reopened half a century later, every minute
would matter.
As the days passed, Maria's mother pleaded with the kidnapper
for her daughter's safe return. "Godforgives mistakes. We would,
too," Frances Ridulph, 44, said, using the media to send a message
towhoever might have her daughter. Maria was "nervous," she said, a
nail biter who could quicklybecome hysterical if things didn't go
her way.
Maria would make a noise if something seemed wrong, her mother
said. And no kidnapper "wouldput up with that for long."
"Whoever took her away hit her weak spot. He played with her,"
the frantic mother added. Ontelevision, she delivered a message to
her baby: "Don't cry, Maria. Above all, don't cry. Don't make
afuss. We'll be with you soon."
Maria's father, Michael, who earned $80 a week at a wire and
cable factory in Sycamore, scoldedreporters camped out at the
police station: "For God's sake, quit saying she is dead. I know
she isstill alive. Nobody would have any reason to kill her."
Later, he pulled one reporter aside and explained, "I want
fathers to help look for my little girl."
Chuck Ridulph accompanied his dad to the fire station on the
morning of December 4 and wasassigned to a search team. Hundreds of
people fanned out over the fields surrounding Sycamore.Others
opened car trunks and cellar doors.
"People were even carrying guns," he recalled.
In a neighborhood called Johnson's Greenhouse, where new streets
were going in, Chuck was askedto climb down a manhole because he
was the only one in the search party small enough to fit.
Later,searchers joined hands as they walked in a line through the
frozen cornfields where Sycamore HighSchool now stands. They found
a gunnysack of abandoned kittens, and that unnerved Chuck.
Othersearchers discovered a torn, bloody petticoat in a farm field,
but it was not Maria's.
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Two FBI agents took up residence in the Ridulphs' parlor. A half
dozen crop-dusters and militaryplanes circled the sky, searching.
The J-11 Roping Club sent riders out on horseback.
Local police with bullhorns urged residents to keep their porch
lights on and report anythingsuspicious. The Illinois State Police
set up half a dozen roadblocks; railroad cars, motel rooms andthe
bus station were searched -- as was every house in Sycamore.
Maria's doll and blue hairbrush were shipped off to the FBI lab
near Washington for analysis. Sowere her schoolbooks, a toy oven, a
tin saxophone and records of songs such as "Three LittleKittens"
and "The Farmer in the Dell." They bore witness to a childhood
interrupted.
Her little friend, Kathy Sigman, found herself under 24-hour
police guard. The family doctor checkedher for signs of sexual
molestation. The newspapers ran a picture of Kathy showing off her
mittensand pointing to the corner where Maria was snatched.
Kathy spent hours poring over mug shots of ex-cons and what
police called "known perverts," butshe didn't see Johnny. She
remembers the shouting reporters and flashing camera bulbs
thatappeared every time she was escorted to a police lineup. At
first, she enjoyed the attention, but asthe case dragged on she
felt exposed, like she was being put on display.
She recalls her mother bending down, placing her hands on her
shoulders and looking her square inthe eye.
Remember his face, Kathy, she said. You have to remember his
face because you are the only onewho can catch him. You are the
only one who knows what he looks like.
'We have found exactly nothing'
There was no ransom note. No phone call from the kidnapper.
Authorities believed Maria's abductorhad a twisted motive: He was a
sexual predator.
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A Chicago Tribune illustration showed what Maria was wearing,
the doll she was carrying and mapsof the crime. Photo: Chicago
Tribune/ MCT /LANDOV
The police chief was certain nobody from Sycamore would do such
a thing. It had to be the work of atrucker or someone else passing
through. The FBI wasn't so sure. As its investigation revealed,
therewas no shortage of potential suspects in town.
Hindenburg, the police chief, told reporters his men had rounded
up and questioned "all knownsexual deviates." They looked into a
local Peeping Tom and followed tips about men nicknamed"Commando"
and "Mr. X."
Investigators dug up a collapsed grave at Elmwood Cemetery. They
traced freight cars that passedthrough Sycamore the night Maria
went missing. They scoured lovers' lanes, drained a lake, set
offdynamite in a quarry. And still they came up empty.
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"We have chased down countless clues, and we have found exactly
nothing," said a frustrated Carl A.Swanson, the state's attorney.
FBI agents came and went, according to a writer for one of
theChicago papers, "checking into everything with the quiet
persistence of bulldogs."
Three days after Maria vanished, an anonymous female caller
alerted the DeKalb County Sheriff'sOffice to a boy named
"Treschner" who lived in the neighborhood and fit the suspect's
description. Apair of FBI agents showed up at the Tessier home on
December 8.
Ralph and Eileen Tessier acknowledged that they had talked about
how their son, John, fit thegeneral description, but they insisted
he was not in Sycamore when Maria was taken: He was 40miles away,
in Rockford, enlisting in the U.S. Air Force.
Phone records seemed to verify their story. Someone had made a
collect call from Rockford to theTessier home at about 7 p.m. John
Tessier and his parents said he called for a ride home. This wasthe
second alibi Eileen Tessier had given for her son. Earlier, as her
daughters listened, she'd toldSycamore police that John was home
all night.
Nobody questioned the young Tessier sisters, and they kept
silent.
'Unusual individuals'
After a week of fruitless searching, authorities alerted
residents to look out for scavengers: "It isentirely possible that
her body has been discarded in a field or a nearby farm. Be alert
to largegatherings of buzzards and crows, and if a body is located
make sure nothing is touched."
The FBI was running out of steam.
"Our temporary office at Sycamore has been functioning for two
weeks. Per diem cost for 29 agentsis $3,600," Chicago's supervisor
wrote in a December 15 memo to Hoover. They'd tracked down 250leads
and processed 200 suspects -- "all with negative results."
Agents still had about 125 leads to go.
The Chicago G-man found it "most peculiar" that such a rigorous
investigation had not turned up asuspect. The locals were passing
on tips about "all of their homosexuals, queers and fairies,
etc."when the FBI was looking for "sex deviants of a different
kind," the supervisor wrote in thepejorative and politically
incorrect language of 1957.
Agents were hampered by the "sheer volume" of leads, he stated,
adding this observation: "I havenever seen as small a city as
Sycamore with such a large volume of these unusual
individuals."
Hoover urged them to keep going: "This case must receive
continuous, aggressive, imaginative,investigative attention."
The best evidence they had was Kathy's story. Some of the
details varied -- did Johnny have amissing tooth or a gap in his
teeth? But she never wavered on the core facts. An agent described
heras "the most completely mature little girl I have ever seen,"
seemingly fearless during questioningand police lineups. "She has
remained steadfast," he reported, even though the FBI's bulldogs
had"ridden her hard."
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Maria's family held out hope that she would come home by
Christmas. From left: Patricia, Chuck,father Michael, Kay and
mother Frances.Photo: Chicago Sun-Times
It was a somber holiday season in Sycamore. The local papers
carried front-page stories about theRidulphs, including a large
photo of Maria's family sitting by their Christmas tree. Her mother
hadbought a typewriter for Maria and wrapped her hair chalk other
gifts.
Their leads exhausted, the FBI agents packed up and went home
for the holidays. With no newdevelopments, the case dropped from
the headlines, but folks in town remained jittery. One
Chicagonewspaper noted at the end of January that Sycamore was
afflicted with "a wound that won't heal."The place had changed, and
not for the better.
"Let a strange man walk down an alley in Sycamore today and the
police are likely to get a call," saidJames E. Boyle, an assistant
prosecutor who went on to become state's attorney, and then a
judge. "Itried to help two young girls across a busy intersection
the other day. They just looked at me wide-eyed."
The giant elm tree on the corner of Archie Place and Center
Cross Street was cut down. Sycamoresettled into a fugue state.
Looking back, Kathy remembers her childhood in two parts: Before
Maria was taken, and after.
"We were safe before, but not afterward," she said. "People can
disappear in big cities but somebodydoesn't disappear in a small
town like Sycamore."
'There wasn't much left to her'
Maria was found in the spring, 120 miles from home. A man
scrounging for morel mushrooms foundher skeleton tucked under a
fallen tree on Roy Cahill's farm off U.S. 20 outside Woodbine, not
farfrom the Iowa border.
Birds and animals had fed on her corpse, clad only in a
black-and-white checked shirt, an undershirtand brown socks.
http://www.dazzlemyhair.com/hair-chalk
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Maria's body was found 120 miles from home on April 26, 1958, by
a man hunting formushrooms.Photo: Chicago Tribune/MCT/LANDOV
At a coroner's inquest, Frank A. Sitar, a retiree from
Minnesota, described the scene he encounteredon the afternoon of
April 26, 1958:
"I thought it was an old deer hide. I came up to it then and I
could see some bones and I thoughtsomebody had shot a dog. Then I
looked closer, and it looked like human bones. I noticed the
jacket,but I didn't pay any attention to it until I noticed the
skull. Then I started to look further, and Inoticed the hair. And I
saw then that hair chalking it was a little girl."
He walked back to the car, told his wife, and they drove to a
farmhouse and summoned authorities.
"There wasn't much left to her," observed James Furlong, the
28-year-old rookie coroner of JoDaviess County. Son of the local
funeral home director, he'd never handled a murder case before.
Nocrime scene photos were taken, he said, because he didn't want
them "slobbered all over the frontpages."
Neither the autopsy nor the inquest determined a cause of death,
beyond "suspected foul play."
Frances Ridulph always said if a child's body was found wearing
brown socks, it would be Maria.Sure enough, the size and
manufacturer's information stamped on the instep of Maria's socks
couldstill be read. Her mother touched the patch she'd sewn on the
black-and-white flannel shirt,recognizing the material. Dental
records confirmed what the family already knew.
Maria was laid to rest in a small white casket on a warm spring
day. An overflow crowd, at least 300,filled the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of St. John. Her friend Kathy was there under
police guard.
Maria was remembered as a bright little girl who had a perfect
attendance record at Sunday school.
"This little girl has entered into everlasting peace, probably
on the night she was taken," said theRev. Louis I. Going. "Maria
was taken out of life through unusual circumstances, but nothing
could
http://www.dazzlemyhair.com/hair-chalk
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deprive her of God-given salvation."
The church organist played "Jesus Loves Me." It was Maria's
favorite hymn.
The trail goes cold
The disappearance and death of her best friend never left Kathy.
Nothing could fill the space whereMaria once was - the games, the
laughter, the shared secrets. She was left with survivor's guilt
andthe social stigma of being connected to a notorious crime.
Maria was laid to rest in a small white casket. She was
remembered for her perfect Sunday schoolattendance.Photo: Chicago
Tribune/MCT/LANDOV
"It robbed me of my childhood," she said recently. "I was
labeled. I was the girl who was with Maria.A lot of parents
wouldn't let their girls play with me. They were afraid he'd come
back and take theirchild.
"I couldn't wait to get out of Sycamore. It bothered me my whole
life why he took her and not me.For years I would ask myself, 'Was
she prettier than I was?'"
Kathy's family moved away from Archie Place in 1961 to a
subdivision on the outskirts of town.When a young man named Mike
Chapman met her at a bowling alley, his mother tried to talk himout
of dating her. "Don't you know who she is?" the mother asked.
"She's the one who was withMaria. Can't you find someone else?"
But Mike wanted only Kathy, and she knew he was the key to a new
life. They left Sycamore in 1969and married in San Antonio, Texas,
where Mike attended technical school. They moved around a bit,then
settled in Tampa, Florida, before returning to Sycamore to care for
aging parents. They raisedthree children.
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Kathy says her own parents were so overprotective she felt like
a prisoner. As a mother, she wentthe other way, letting her kids
make their own decisions and their own mistakes. The couple
nowlives in St. Charles, about a half-hour drive from Sycamore.
No matter where they went, Kathy looked back over her
shoulder.
Johnny was still out there.