ST. LOUIS (AP) — Military records that a former police officer says would help exonerate him in a 1957 Illinois slaying no longer exist.
An archivist with a federal repository of military records in St. Louis says Jack Daniel McCullough’s Air Force file was destroyed in a 1973 fire at the storage site.
McCullough told The Associated Press in a jailhouse interview that the records would prove he was having a military medical examination in Chicago the day that 7-year-old Maria Ridulph (RIHD’-uhlf) disappeared in Sycamore, Ill., on Dec. 3, 1957.
But archivist Kevin Cowan says none of McCullough’s records survived the fire. At the time, McCullough went by the name of John Tessier.
McCullough was arrested last month in Seattle. He’s being held on a fugitive charge pending his return to Illinois.
