Aamer Madhani

USA TODAY

An Illinois prosecutor on Friday said that new evidence has persuaded him that a 75-year-old man was wrongly convicted in 2012 for the decades-old murder of a 7-year-old girl in the northern Illinois town of Sycamore.

Jack McCullough, a former cop in Washington state who was convicted in a bench trial for the abduction and killing of Maria Ridulph, had long insisted that he wasn't even in Sycamore, about 65 miles from Chicago, when Maria was abducted in December 1957. Her body was found in the nearby town of Galena five months later.

But newly found phone records and other evidence bolster McCullough's defense that he was some 35 miles away from the small farm community at the the time of Maria's abduction and couldn't be responsible, says Richard Schmack, DeKalb County, Ill. State's Attorney.

McCullough, who was 17 at the time of the incident, had long contended that he was at a U.S. Air Force recruitment center in Rockford at the time of the abduction. He said he made a collect call home from a payphone at the Rockford post office asking for a ride home that supported his alibi.

The incident shook the community and captured national attention (even President Dwight Eisenhower took notice of it) as police and the FBI grappled with the case. When McCullough, who was living in the Seattle-area, was charged in 2011, it was believed to have been the oldest cold case ever to go to trial.

"I know that there are people who will never believe that he is not responsible for the crime," said Schmack, who announced his findings after completing a six-month review of the case that was spurred by McCullough's push for a new trial. "Many of these people are my neighbors in Sycamore. But I cannot allow that to sway me from my sworn duty to support the Constitution of the United States, the constitution of the state of Illinois, and to perform faithfully the primary duty of my office: 'To seek justice, not merely to convict.' "

Police had interviewed McCullough, who previously went by the name John Tessier, soon after the killing and said his alibi had checked out. But the Illinois State Police reopened the case in 2010 after getting a tip from McCullough's sister, Janet, who said their mother told her weeks before her death that McCullough had committed the crime.

McCullough is due to appear in court Tuesday in Sycamore, and Schmack said he will not oppose a defense motion to dismiss the conviction. Schmack said that he believes that McCullough, who is serving his life sentence at a correction facility in Pontiac, Ill, could be released "very soon."

Schmack said that while the state's attorney and FBI accepted McCullough's alibi as they investigated Maria's murder in 1957 and 1958, the judge would not allow defense attorneys to present the evidence because it was derived from FBI documents or police reports that could not be substantiated by agents. (At his 2012 trial, prosecutors acknowledged that McCullough may have made a collect call home but disputed that it was made in Rockford. The newly produced phone records pinpoint where the phone call was made.)

"Because all of the police officers were dead and you couldn't call them as witnesses, you couldn't introduce the police reports (under Illinois statute)," Schmack said in a telephone interview Friday after releasing his findings.

But Schmack, who did not head the State's Attorney's Office at the time of McCullough's prosecution, said that the judge failed to consider an "ancient documents exception" in state law that would have allowed the police reports to be considered.

Schmack also noted that when investigators interviewed the family of Maria Ridulph in 1957, her mother recalled having seen the little girl come in for a doll at 6:40 p.m. and Maria's father recalled seeing her come in the house sometime after 6:30 as he watched a television show. Phone records show that McCullough's phone call from Rockford happen at 6:57 p.m.

"He couldn't have been in two places at the same time," Schmack said.

Charles Ridulph, Maria’s older brother, told the Daily Chronicle of DeKalb that Schmack’s explanation was “ridiculous.”

The 2012 conviction of McCullough was also won in part because Kathy Sigman, who was playing with Maria shortly before her abduction, picked out McCullough from a photo lineup that was presented to her by police more than 50 years after the incident when he re-emerged as a suspect.

Schmack, however, said that the photo array that was presented to Sigman was highly prejudicial.

The photos were presented by a police officer who knew which of the six photos was of the suspect, a practice that is now prohibited by Illinois law but wasn't at the time. The photos of the other five in the lineup were of young men wearing suit coats, while the photo of a young McCullough was one that was taken during an evening at a nightclub, Schmack said.

McCullough, who lived near Sigman and Maria at the time of the time of the incident, was also the only one in the photo lineup who was from their neighborhood and would have been familiar to Sigman, Schmack said.

In 1957, a young Sigman identified two other men, one in a photo lineup and one in person, as being close in appearance to the possible kidnapper. One of the men lived in a nearby town, had a history of child molestation and a witness said she saw a truck bearing that man's name leaving the scene. That man's wife served as an alibi and he was never charged, Schmack said.

McCullough would go on to serve as a police officer in Lacy and Milton, Wash. But he was fired from the Milton Police Department after he was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage runaway in a 1982 incident. He was originally charged with statutory rape but later plead guilty to the less serious charge of unlawful communication with a minor.

He was found not guilty in 2012 of raping his half-sister in an incident that had occurred 50 years earlier. His half-sister, who was 14 at the time of the alleged incident, came forward after McCullough emerged in 2010 as the suspect in the Maria Ridulph killing.

"This case is really not about anything in his past history — except whether he is guilty of this crime," Schmack said.

Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondent Aamer Madhani on Twitter: @AamerISmad