SYCAMORE – Charles Ridulph and his family hoped the CBS-TV “48 Hours” special on a 55-year-old cold case would banish any question of Jack D. McCullough’s guilt.

The special, called “Cold as Ice,” followed McCullough’s conviction last year for murdering Charles Ridulph’s sister, 7-year-old Maria, in December 1957. She disappeared after a man named Johnny approached her and a friend, Kathy Chapman, playing outside. Chapman went inside to get mittens and when she returned, Maria and Johnny were gone.

Instead, Charles Ridulph said, the show focused more on the alleged rape of McCullough’s half sister – a charge on which McCullough was cleared – before posing the possibility McCullough was actually guilty of the rape and not of the murder for which he was convicted.