Suspect in ’57 Illinois case held pending extradition
SEATTLE – The former Western Washington police officer arrested in Seattle last week in connection with the 1957 slaying of an Illinois girl was charged Wednesday with being a fugitive from justice. The felony charge, filed in King County District Court, will allow authorities to hold Jack Daniel McCullough on a high bail amount, pending extradition to Illinois to face a murder charge.
“It’s a holding charge. The intent is to keep him in custody on that $3 million bail pending his return to Illinois. Once he’s returned to Illinois, that fugitive charge will be dismissed,” said Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecutor’s Office.
McCullough, 71, was arrested at his North Seattle home last week and subsequently ordered held in lieu of $3 million bail in connection with the murder charge filed in DeKalb County, Ill. McCullough waived his appearance in a King County Jail courtroom Wednesday, so his lawyer pleaded not guilty on his behalf.
Janey O’Connor, who calls McCullough her “father by choice,” attended Wednesday’s arraignment at the King County Jail. She scoffed at the evidence prosecutors say links McCullough to 7-year-old Maria Ridulph’s death: an unused train ticket from the day the child disappeared from her home in Sycamore, Ill.
McCullough was an early suspect in the girl’s slaying but claimed he had been in Chicago when Maria was abducted. That alibi started to unravel last year when detectives contacted a former girlfriend of McCullough’s and asked whether she had old photographs of the two of them. When she pulled one out of a frame, she discovered an unused train ticket from the day of the crime, according to the affidavit of probable cause.
O’Connor said she recently went on eBay to find unused train tickets from the 1950s to prove they aren’t hard to find, and was able to locate three of them.
“Jack McCullough is my father. I love him, I believe in him,” said O’Connor, who added that McCullough married her mother. “He’s a strong man; he’s going to make it through this.”
McCullough was 18 and went by the name John Tessier when Maria disappeared.
McCullough changed his name in 1994. He is a longtime Washington state resident who served as a police officer in Lacey and Milton, according to a document of probable cause.
After he moved to Washington state as an adult, McCullough 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, according to an affidavit of probable cause.