The Mystery of Maria

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Dispression. December nineteen fifty seven,
two seven year old girls were outside in

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the neighborhood streets of Sycamore, Illinois, playing in the newly fallen snow.

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They were best friends, Kathy Sigmund
and Maria Ridolph, but witnesses also placed

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a third, rather unusual playmate with
the two girls that wintery evening. According

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to Kathy and other witnesses who saw
the third mysterious figure, the girls were

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already outside playing when a young man, maybe in his early twenties approached them.

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Despite the age gap, the three
of them became fast friends, especially

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when this young man, who introduced
himself as Johnny, offered to give the

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girls piggyback rides. At some point
during the evening, Maria, an honor

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student in the second grade, was
excited about this new friend, so she

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wanted to rush home and grab one
of her favorite toys so that she could

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show it to him. Maria came
back toy in hand, but by then

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it had started snowing again and her
best friend Kathy was getting cold. This

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time, it was Kathy who left
Maria alone with Johnny so that she could

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go home and get her mittens.
When she came back, everything was completely

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different. The streets were empty,
and both Maria and Johnny were gone.

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Walked over to Maria's house to try
to find her friend, but Maria wasn't

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there either. Not thinking that anything
bad had actually happened at the time,

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Maria's parents first sent out her eleven
year old brother to go and look for

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her, but when he came back
empty handed, a full blown manhunt was

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soon underway. Her friend's family and
the police scoured the neighborhood, but there

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was a pit in Maria's mother's stomach. She later said, quote, my

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daughter was a nervous girl and if
she got in any trouble would become hysterical.

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I'm the only one who would calm
her down. Maria was also described

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as a screamer who was easily agitated. The canvas of the neighborhood came back

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with nothing, and, now fearing
that Maria had been kidnapped and potentially taken

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across state lines, the FBI joined
the search. Cathy described her new friend

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Johnny as a young man with his
slender chin, light hair, gap in

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his teeth, and was wearing a
very colorful sweater. Fearing that Johnny would

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come back to attack the key witness
against him, the FBI put Kathy and

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her family in a safe house.
They also tightened the timeline for Maria's possible

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abduction even further. Witnesses had seen
the girls playing alone between six and six

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thirty that evening, and going off
the family's testimonies from when both Kathy and

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Maria stopped buy their respective homes,
Johnny must have approached them after six thirty.

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This gave a window of about fifteen
minutes for Maria to disappear into thin

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air, and it looked like that's
exactly what had happened. On April twenty

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sixth, nineteen fifty eight, about
five months after that fateful night, two

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tourists found the skeletal remains of a
child near Woodbine, Illinois. She was

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too badly decomposed to identify right away, and it was a combination of her

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dental records, hair samples, and
her clothing that led investigators to believe that

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they had finally found Maria. She
was wearing only her shirt, vest and

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socks, with the rest of her
clothes missing. Due to the terrible condition

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of her remains, the coroner couldn't
determine the cause of death or if any

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sexual abuse had occurred. Realizing now
that whatever happened to Maria hadn't happened to

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cross stated lines, the FBI withdrew, but not without naming a few suspects.

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First amongst those was a neighborhood teenager
called John Tessier. John Tessier had

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actually been born John Cherry in nineteen
thirty nine in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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His father was a British sergeant in
World War Two and was unfortunately killed during

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the early fighting of the war.
His mother, Eileen mc culluoff, was

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one of the first female plain spotters
in the RAF, which is how after

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the death of her first husband,
she met a member of the American Air

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Force called Ralph Tessier. Eileen and
Ralph married four years later, and at

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the end of the war, Eileen
and John moved with Ralph to Sycamore,

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Illinois, where the family would grow
even more together. Eileen and Ralph had

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six more children, and Ralph officially
adopted John, making John Cherry now John

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Tessier. The Tessier house in Sycamore
was just around the corner from the Ridolph

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family home, and if John having
the same name as the mysterious Johnny the

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girls had been playing with that evening
wasn't enough to make authority suspicious. It

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turned out that John already had a
bit of a troubled past. When John

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was in the tenth grade, he
was expelled from school after an incident where

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he allegedly pushed the teacher and called
her an insulting name. At the time

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of Maria's disappearance, he was eighteen
years old, and it wasn't too long

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after that that there were rumors of
more allegations of him threatening to kill one

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of his sisters and sexually abusing another. It looked like John was the perfect

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suspec and the disappearance of Maria,
So how come Kathy was never asked anything

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about him? Why didn't they even
show him in a lineup? When the

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police interviewed John and his family in
their initial canvas of the neighborhood, John

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and his mother Eileen, told them
that he had been home all evening,

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But when the FBI conducted their own
interviews only a few days later, that

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story changed. Now John had spent
the evening of Maria's disappearance in Rockford,

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Illinois, where he had been doing
physical examinations to enlist in the Air Force,

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and he had phone records showing him
calling from Rockford and trained tickets to

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prove it. This time, it
was his stepfather, Ralph, who confirmed

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John's alibi. At the time,
Ralph was a man of good standing with

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the Sycamore Police. He was the
one who painted the local police cars and

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he stood up for his step son
and they believed him, but the FBI

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were still unconvinced. They asked John
to come in for a lie detector test

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and it was only when John passed
it that they officially removed him from the

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list of suspects. Cathy was never
even shown a picture of John, and

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he left for the Air Force the
very next day after his final interview with

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authorities. Thirteen years went by and
Maria's case was nowhere nearer to being solved.

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John became a captain before retiring from
the Air Force and then moved to

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Seattle, Washington, where he became
a policeman. For years, John and

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his chief of police had argument after
argument, and his boss tried to get

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him fired on several occasions. He
cited a long list of complaints that he

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had about John and his work in
general, but John always managed to wiggle

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out of the news at the last
moment. It was only in nineteen eighty

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two that John would do something that
he couldn't quite come back from, and

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it was unfortunately quite a big one. John and his then girlfriend took in

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a fifteen year old runaway named Michelle
Wineman. Michell knew John was a police

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officer and trusted him enough to live
with him while she had nowhere else to

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go, but she later said that
everything changed only a few short days after

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she'd moved in. Michelle later testified
that John had sexually abused her. Now

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John's chief of police had exactly what
he needed to get him out of his

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department and behind bars, but John
somehow managed to get out of it again.

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He'd been charged with statutory rape,
which is a felony and should have

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resulted in jail time, but he
and his lawyers managed to work out a

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deal where John pled guilty to communication
with the minor for immoral purposes. That

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dropped him all the way down to
a misdemeanor, and he was sentenced to

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one year probation and fired from the
police. That was it. He later

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found work as a security guard and
changed his name to Jack Daniel McCullough in

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honor of his mother, whose maiden
name had been McCullough. This came right

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at the top of his mother,
Eileen's long and traumatic death cancer and had

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been taking very powerful painkillers when she
made a startling deathbed confession to her two

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daughters. Quote those two little girls
and the one that disappeared. John did

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it. John did it, and
you have to tell someone. That's what

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Eileen reportedly told Janet and Mary Patt, two of John's half sisters. According

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to her daughters, Eileen was admitting
to covering up John's alleged crimes, and

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now she wanted something to be done
about it. She apparently made Janet promise

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to take what she now knows to
the authorities. John was asked not to

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come to his mother's funeral. Janet, who was the sister that John reportedly

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once threatened to kill, spent the
next fourteen years trying to get law enforcement

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to reopen Maria's case, and finally, in two thousand and eight, she

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got what she wanted with news about
Eileen's deathbed confession. The investigation was back

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on, with Janet leading the siblings
who had their own sides to die tell

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as well. Two of the older
sisters, Catherine and Jean, testified that

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their mother had lied to investigators about
John's whereabouts that evening, and Jean had

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a little bit more to share about
John. Jeane was the sister who claimed

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that John had sexually abused her as
a miner, and said that he had

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done that same thing to other young
girls as well. This was a potential

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motive, especially seeing as Maria had
been missing a lot of her clothes when

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she had been found. Add that
to Maria's mother's testimony of Maria being someone

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who screamed when she was frightened,
and the motive for murder becomes even stronger.

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But Eileen had been incredibly sick and
delirious when she'd confessed to covering up

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for her son, and John still
had a pretty solid alibi. He had

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been in Rockford that day, his
exams and paperwork had been filed that evening,

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and he had phone call records to
prove there had been a collect call

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from Rockford's station made in his name. He even had a train ticket.

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But then the cold case team now
looking into this case ask themselves this surprising

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question. The investigators at the time
of Maria's disappearance had taken John and his

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ticket at face value, but John
did have his own car. Was it

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possible that he could have kidnapped Maria
and then driven to Rockford in time to

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place that call? By their estimation, if the kidnapping had happened at six

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point twenty instead of six point thirty, then the answer was yes. That

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would have given John enough time to
drive to Rockfort and make the call at

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six fifty seven and meet with the
recruiting officers at seven point fifteen. But

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even though the deviation from the original
timeline was only ten minutes, it raises

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a lot of questions. Witnesses at
the time placed Maria's disappearance at six point

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thirty, and the police were already
on the scene searching by seven pm.

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Did that mean that John had Maria
with him when he went to Rockford.

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Had he already killed her before driving
away? Was it possible that an eighteen

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year old would be able to think
clearly enough to establish an alibi just minutes

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after killing a seven year old girl. Hoping to find answers, the authorities

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asked the now fifty four year old
Kathy Sigmund if she recognized anyone from the

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lineup of photographs they presented her.
Finally, Kathy laid eyed on John Tessier

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and she identified him as the boy
who'd approached them that evening, but even

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that identification had some major holes.
Kathy was asked to remember someone from over

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forty five years ago, and the
lineup photos were also questionable. It was

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made up of graduation photos of other
boys from nineteen fifty seven, but because

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John had been expelled, he didn't
actually have a graduation photo. His photo

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was the only one that was different, with a totally different background and set

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up, and it really stuck out
among the others. But John was arrested

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and sent to court. Essentially,
what the prosecution had was circumstantial evidence and

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witnessed testimonies from a family that openly
hated each other. Probably expect that this

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case would be dismissed. John's defense
lawyers spent only two hours in court defending

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him and only interviewed a few key
witnesses. In December twenty twelve, when

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John McCullough was seventy three years old, he was sentenced to life in prison,

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but he didn't accept it. He
continued to appeal his verdict, and

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in twenty sixteen a judge ordered a
new trial against John. Only a week

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later, those charges were dismissed.
Another year after that, and the judge

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issued John a certificate of innocence,
officially ending his part in Maria's tragic and mysterious story