SYCAMORE – Charles Ridulph doesn’t know who his sister would have been if she hadn’t been murdered 55 years ago, but he’s confident her killer is going to prison for life.

Ridulph, of Sycamore, asked Judge James Hallock to give Jack D. McCullough the maximum sentence for kidnapping 7-year-old Maria Ridulph from a street corner near her home in Sycamore, murdering her and dumping her body in a wooded area in rural Jo Daviess County.

For Ridulph’s family, Monday’s sentencing ended a difficult year-and-a-half of reliving painful memories and discovering disturbing details about Dec. 3, 1957.