A woman who accused a Seattle man of sexually assaulting her 50 years ago in Illinois when she was just 14 testified Tuesday that he drove her to a house in an unfamiliar part of the small town they were in, raped her and allowed two other men to do the same.
She was the first witness in the trial of 72-year-old Jack McCullough, who's charged with rape and indecent liberties with a child in the 1962 case in Sycamore. A grand jury indicted him last September, a month after he was indicted on kidnapping and murder charges in the 1957 death of another Sycamore girl, 7-year-old Maria Ridulph.
The rape case is being tried separately. McCullough on Monday asked for a judge to decide the case instead of a jury.
DeKalb County prosecutors acknowledge there is no physical evidence, but said they will prove McCullough has the propensity to commit such crimes. Defense attorneys said the rape case is based on one person's account and can't be corroborated by anyone else.
The woman accusing McCullough of rape testified that he picked her up in a convertible and drove her to the house, where he assaulted her on a cot in a dark room before offering her to two other men, who also raped her, The (DeKalb) Daily Chronicle reported (http://bit.ly/IumP86 ). The Associated Press generally does not name victims in rape cases.
She testified that she could not see the men's faces. She said a fourth man told her to put on her clothes but did not rape her. She said she didn't remember how she got out of the house but made her way home, showered and went to sleep.
When questioned by public defender Regina Harris, the woman could not remember whether the alleged rape occurred in the spring or summer of 1962, only that it was a warm day and she didn't have school.
Local
Another woman testified that she was sexually assaulted by McCullough in 1982 when he was a police officer in Milton, Wash., and she was a 15-year-old runaway. McCullough originally was charged with statutory rape and eventually pleaded guilty to unlawful communication with a minor and was fired from his job.
McCullough is being held on bond of more than $3 million in the DeKalb County Jail, about 65 miles west of Chicago.
He was arrested July 1 in Seattle in the Ridulph killing, one of the oldest slaying cases in the nation to be reopened. He has pleaded not guilty, and that trial has not been scheduled.
Maria Ridulph was abducted as she played outside her home in December of 1957. Her body was found the following spring in a wooded area about 120 miles away.
McCullough, who was 18 and went by the name John Tessier at the time of the girl's disappearance, lived less than two blocks from her home. He was an initial suspect but had an alibi: He said he had traveled to Chicago that day for military medical exams before enlisting in the Air Force.
<a font-family:="" href="http://
