Footsteps in the Snow

September 29, 2014
Lachman (The Last Lincolns: The Rise and Fall of a Great American Family) does an outstanding job of making the resolution of a horrific cold-case murder into a gripping page-turner. The murder case dates back to December 1957, in the small Illinois town of Sycamore. Two young girls, Maria Ridulph and Kathy Sigman, were playing just outside their homes when a stranger approached them, introducing himself as Johnny and offering to give the girls piggyback rides. Kathy ran inside to retrieve her mittens; when she returned, Maria and Johnny were gone. The search for the missing Maria engulfed the community, but ended tragically with the discovery of the seven-year-old’s corpse months later. It took decades for the killer to be identified, under circumstances that sound like fiction, with a dramatic deathbed revelation that set the stage for a prosecution more than 50 years after the crime. Despite the book’s length, Lachman paces it perfectly, carrying the reader along on a narrative full of twists, while delving into the tragedy’s impact on Sycamore and its residents. Photos. Agent: Paul Fedorko, N.S. Bienstock Inc.

November 15, 2014

Lachman (executive producer, Inside Edition; A Secret Life) details the "coldest case in U.S. history," from the kidnapping of Maria Ridulph in 1957 to the conviction of her killer 55 years later, in 2012. Maria was just seven years old when she disappeared from her Sycamore, IL, neighborhood. She and her best friend, Kathy Sigman, had been playing in the snow when they encountered a man called Johnny, who offered the girls a piggyback ride. Maria vanished after Kathy ran home for her mittens. Their neighbor Jack Daniel McCullough, nee John "Johnny" Tessier was able to provide an alibi and was not a suspect at the time. On her deathbed in 1994, Johnny's mother confessed to two of his sisters that she and her husband had provided the alibi for him. In 2008, Janet Tessier emailed the Illinois State Police who then reopened the case. Based on the depth and breadth of Lachman's reporting, it is obvious that the author worked closely with the surviving Ridulph and Tessier family members. A related Lifetime documentary is planned, so there may be some demand for this book. VERDICT Recommended for popular true crime collections. A fascinating and well-documented account of a (very) cold case and the repercussions of a horrible crime.--Karen Sandlin Silverman, Scarborough H.S. Lib., ME

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