A (16:55)
By 8:30pm on December 3, 1957, a massive search party marched through the streets of Sycamore, Illinois. Police were joined by families from just about every house on the block calling out for 7 year old Maria Ridolph. The owner of the local hardware store even cleaned out his shelves, handing over lanterns and flashlights to the searchers. No stone was left unturned. Based on Kathy's story, detectives questioned neighbors about the mysterious man Maria was last seen with, a 20something blonde man named Johnny. The only person with any information was a contractor who lived across the street from the Riddoffs. He said he heard a child scream around the time Maria disappeared. He thought she was only playing and didn't go outside to investigate, which made sense. Sycamore was supposed to be safe, the kind of place where people left their doors unlocked all year round. It made what happened to Maria all the more terrifying. But at that point, the community was still hopeful. After all, there were dozens of searchers and the conditions seemed favorable. An hour or so into the quest, the snow had all but stopped. That's when three neighbors, including Kathy's father, came upon a trail of footprints clearly belonging to one adult and one child. The steps led to an open field behind the rid off house, then toward a nearby barn. The men treaded carefully, with only a vague description to go on. They had no idea how dangerous this Johnny was, so they walked softly on the snow, following the trail to the barn. At the last moment, they jumped around the corner, hoping to catch the culprit by surprise. But no one was there. Instead, there were some shallow tire tracks heading north toward the highway. The men had no idea where the kidnapper was going, but it seemed like he'd gotten a head start. While the neighborhood search party continued into the night, local detectives launched an official investigation and the first person they wanted to talk to was 8 year old Kathy Sigman. While children aren't usually the most reliable witnesses, Kathy had an unusually strong memory. She gave officers a detailed description of Johnny and his outfit, and he wore a gray hat, blue jeans and a multicolored striped sweater that didn't seem like enough to protect against the bitter cold. He was clean shaven and Kathy said he had long teeth or possibly A gap tooth. She also told her family the man spoke like she used to. Her parents took that to mean that Johnny had a country accent. According to them, he probably sounded like a quote hillbilly. While detectives took down the details, the rest of the officers set up roadblocks. Given the tire tracks, they weren't too hopeful. They estimated Johnny had a 70 minute lead on them. If he went along Route 64, as they suspected, chances were he'd already left the county by 10:30 that night. The entire town had been scanned from top to bottom. And yet, when the search party circled back to Maria's house, they made a startling discovery. Only a few hundred feet away, on the outskirts of a neighboring property, a group of volunteers found Maria's rubber doll lying in the snow. Police had covered the same area during an hour earlier. Some of the officers couldn't believe they'd missed the doll the first time and openly wondered if someone had planted it there. After their initial search, one of the men involved in the investigation, Assistant State Attorney James Boyle, was convinced someone put the doll there after the fact. The following day, he made a public announcement begging the person who moved the doll to come forward and identify themselves. No one did, but by that point, it probably didn't matter. The doll had already been handled by dozens of people, making fingerprint analysis useless. Other crucial evidence had been damaged too. The footprints and tire tracks behind the barn were trampled. Even so, that didn't slow the search. A day after Maria went missing on Wednesday, December 4, the probe continued. The local high school even canceled classes for seniors so they could help look. The town factories gave workers a day off so they could join in too. Sadly, their efforts didn't bear much fruit. By 7pm around 24 hours after Maria went missing, authorities were reasonably confident she was no longer in the area. At that point, the FBI got involved. The possibility that she'd been taken out of state brought the kidnapping into their jurisdiction. The investigation was headed up by 46 year old Richard Oyerbach. Educated as a lawyer, Richard joined the Bureau six years earlier as a special agent. He pulled out all the stops to find Maria, including sending observation planes and helicopters into the skies to search with a bird's eye view. Back on the ground, agents went over every possible suspect with a fine tooth comb. That included searching the homes of everyone in the Ridoff's vicinity and interrogating all known criminals. By Thursday, Maria had been missing for over 48 hours and the authorities were already expecting the worst. In an unusual move, a couple of special agents even set up camp at the Riddoff home. They were there to protect the family and monitor any incoming information. They slept on a pullout couch, tapped the family's phones and waited with bated breath, hoping the kidnapper would call to ask for ransom. If he didn't, they feared Maria was already dead. Over the next few days, A total of 60 agents flooded Sycamore under Richard's command. They interviewed gas station attendants, out of town guests and even dentists, hoping that someone with Johnny's wife long teeth had recently been examined. None of it turned up solid evidence until a couple of days in, when an anonymous tip led to a breakthrough. A caller who refused to identify herself phoned the sheriff to report a suspicious young man in the Ridoffs neighborhood. His name was John Tessier. He was 18 years old, a little younger than police expected, but he had blonde hair and lived only about two blocks from the Ridoffs. After interviewing his neighbors, agents found plenty of reasons to think the anonymous caller was onto something. Multiple residents described him as weird and generally got the sense that he was a bit of a creep. Some people even had firsthand experiences to back up their feelings. One teenager in the area had seen John standing in front of his bedroom window wearing nothing but his underwear on multiple occasions. According to the witness, John simply stood there staring out with a strange blank expression. He seemed completely out of it. And that wasn't the only disturbing story detectives heard about John. Five years before Maria's disappearance, another eight year old girl named Pam Smith remembered John approaching her and offering a piggyback ride. She said yes, then quickly regretted it when he started sprinting down the street and refused to put her down. She clung to him, bawling for a full four blocks until a neighbor spotted them at a gas station. Thanks to his help, Pam's father caught up to the pair and yanked his daughter off John's back. He then threatened John, who never came near Pam again. The similarities to Maria's abduction were obvious. So on December 8, five days after she disappeared, the authorities paid John a visit. He wasn't home, but his parents invited the agents in. They apparently weren't surprised to see the FBI. Everyone in town knew the police were looking for a man named Johnny. The Tessiers figured they would be questioned sooner or later, but insisted John had an ironclad alibi. According to them, on December 3rd, when Maria vanished, John was 40 miles out of town. He had traveled to Rockford, Illinois that afternoon to enlist in the Air Force. His parents told investigators that around 7:10pm the same time Maria was abducted. He called them from a payphone and asked to be picked up. By 8 o', clock, he was in the car with his dad on his way home. If that was true, John Tessier couldn't be the culprit. He was already in Rockford when Maria was taken. Agents would need to verify his alibi. In the meantime, they asked to search his room. They might have been looking for the multicolored sweater 8 year old Kathy had described. If they were, they didn't find it or anything else incriminating. Still, they asked John to come in for a lie detector test later that week. When his parents told him about it later that night, he eagerly agreed to take the polygraph. According to them, he seemed anxious to get the exam over with, claiming he had nothing to hide. He didn't know he was in for a rude awakening. Pam Smith's story had rocketed him to the very top of the FBI suspect list. And on December 9, when he showed up for the polygraph, the agents didn't pull any punches. The first thing they said to him was, we know you did it. That's when John started to panic. This was one test could shape the course of his future. If he couldn't convince the cops he was innocent, his life would be over.
