And, interestingly enough, here’s an article specifically referencing the JFK assassination in regards to “flashbulb memories.”
I wouldn’t trust a 50-year memory. Hell, I don’t even trust my own recollections of Sept. 11, 2001.
Not worthless, but I don’t think a jury is going to use them to convict a person of murder. If there is some more concrete evidence, they might be used to corraborate it, but just on their own I don’t think they’re going to help the case against the suspect much.
The suspect was 17. The eye-witness said the kidnapper said he was in his early twenties.
Assuming the suspects story was true, I don’t think there really is likely to be anybody that can contribute to his defense. He was out of town, no one is likely to remember him in Rockford. The person who gave him a ride back seems to be dead.
Aside from pulykamell’s cite that peoples memory of the day Kennedy was shot isn’t as good as they think it was, the usual construction is that people remember where they were the momment they heard Kennedy was shot. In this case, we have peoples testimony about seeing a specific car or getting a ride from their dad several hours before they first could’ve heard about the kidnapping.
I do understand that memories over time can become tainted, people tell stories about an event and it ties into those memories etc. Over the years it all kind of blurs together yet seems like a ‘vivid’ memory.
The police are also well aware of this phenomenon. I’m just trying to point out that it is not ‘worthless’ it is ‘subject to the effects of the passage of time on memory’.
The question isn’t actually what would constitute indisputable, 100% certain evidence (like DNA might have if old Sheriff “Two Guns” had thought to preserve some clothing and forensic samples back in the day) but it is not necessary to have an open and shut case to get a conviction much less for the police just to make the charges.
Also looking at the affidavit, there apparently was a record of a collect call from Rockford to the Tessler household shortly after the girl was kidnapped, and at the same time the suspect and his father claimed the call was made. That seems a lot more concrete then peoples 50 year old memories.
(yes, I am playing Jr Detective to avoid finishing my dissertation, why do you ask?)
Yes, but the suspect owned a car, which was alleged to have been seen driving that day.
So, I’ll be Jr. Detective: He raped and killed the girl, missed his train disposing of the body, drove his car to Rockford and called dad collect to establish an alibi.
There is an eye-witness who will swear he saw the car driving in town that day, and another who will swear his father couldn’t have picked him up in Rockford because he was picking his sister up at the 4H meeting. His ex-girlfriend will swear she didn’t go out with him that night because her parents wouldn’t let her leave due to the kidnapping, but he told detectives that is where he went.
He wouldn’t have needed to have the ride from his father since he had his car with him. When pressed into a desperate situation of not knowing if his son might be guilty, might be framed, might be subject to a terrible misunderstanding, whatever his motives, the father simply lied.
FTR, Sycamore is due west of Chicago, not downstate, and is almost an exurb of Chicago. A nice little town which, because it is so close to Chicago and next to DeKalb, a town with a big college, you have many of the cultural advantages of a big city. In '57, though, NIU was much smaller, the Reagan tollway didn’t exist, and Sycamore was more like Mayberry.
Yeah, apparently in an interview in 2010. Sorry if I don’t trust memories, but I’m definitely not going to put much weight, if any, on that one. :dubious:
I don’t see anything here so far that could possibly lead to a case within a football field of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” They’ve got to be hoping he breaks down or confesses or something, because I just don’t see a case there otherwise.
The call was made a little before 7:00, the girl was abducted at 6:15. From the times given in the affidavit (linked here) it looks like Rockford was at least an hour away, and of course Tessier would have not only have had to drive the distance in that time, but also rape and kill the girl. Its pretty hard to have him kill the girl in Sycamore and make the call from Rockford less then an hour later.
The train was from Chicago to Rockford, not from Sycamore to Rockford. He’d spent the morning in Chicago getting a physical for his induction into the military. This part is almost certainly true, since the military gave him the ticket from Chicago to Rockford, and if he was lying about getting a military physical, it would be easy for the cops to find out. The train from Rockford got in at 6:45, about ten minutes before he made his collect call, so if he really did skip the train, go home, kill the girl and then high tale it to Rockford to make a collect call, he was pretty lucky in happening to make the call at the same time as he would’ve made it had he really been on the train.
Plus, if he had his car with him, why get the train ticket in the first place?
Well, it will be interesting to see if they’ll actually swear to this in court. I’d personally have a lot of trouble swearing to a fifty year old memory.
I’m not sure that that matters. By 9, the girl had already been kidnapped, and even if his dad didn’t pick him up, Tessier had plenty of time to be back in Rockford.
They could be hoping he just confesses, or that the renewed interest in the case brings more leads forward. There is still this ‘undisclosed new information’ they were following up on in the first place when they went to his ex-girlfriend to ask for a picture of the two of them together from that era.
After so many years its true, the people involved and witnesses are getting up in years. Someone might have wanted to unburden themselves of something they kept a secret all these years and called in a new tip. Someone might have just decided to stick it to him and frame him. (its kind of strange that his ex-girlfriend would still have a framed photo of them together on hand and ready for the police, but I guess not impossible to believe).
Time will tell…
Of course I’m not familiar with the area but I’m giving the benefit of the doubt that the investigating police are. But as long as we’re following the line of reasoning that he was creating an alibi and his father was lying to protect him, they could have also called a friend in Rockford and asked them to call at a certain time.
Right, that is where the statement recently in the new investigation came up that his car was seen, in Chicago (IIRC) indicating that he had driven his car from Sycamore to Chicago. I’m not 100% sure now if the quote was indicating Chicago or Sycamore but remember it as being Chicago. In either case they are saying his car was out on the road at the time the train would have been moving.
He may have already had the train ticket but missed the train when he was inconvenienced by having to drive out of his way to dispose of the corpse.
Her body was found “at Roy Cahill’s farm, about 20 miles east of Galena. Maria’s body was about 500 feet off U.S. 20,” is that on the way to Rockford or Chicago from Sycamore?
Proving the suspect lied about various things in the initial statements tends to discredit other statements they made that are in question. Maybe he didn’t know what his alibi fully was going to be yet, maybe he had planned to contact her and ask her to back up his story but couldn’t. The only thing that isn’t possible, is that he was telling the truth.
Maybe, but then he managed to kidnap, rape and kill a girl and despite supposedly being a loner, he managed to assemble a conspiracy of three people in two different towns to help him cover up the murder, and had a confederate go to a downtown payphone to make a call while his father answered the call and then drove his sister to the next town to her 4H meeting, all within forty five minutes. Not totally impossible, but it seems more likely the people that claim they saw him in town 50 years ago are just misremembering.
No it was in Sycamore, near the towns school. And it was around 2-3, before the train left Chicago.
The train left before the girl was kidnapped.
According to the affadavit I linked to, the body was found 120 miles away, so it can’t be between Sycamore and Rockford, which is only 50 miles away.
Its possible he was telling the truth 50 years ago, and the gf simply misremembered the night. He only claimed to have been with her for a half-hour that night, hardly impossible she wouldn’t remember that (and in the affadavit, its actually phrased somewhat hedgingly, that she “didn’t remember seeing him that night”).
Also, the 2007 article mentions the little girl who was an eyewitness was asked to see “dozens” of suspects, but there’s no discussion of her having fingered Tessier 50 years ago. That seems odd, they must have shown her him, given that he seems to have been their primary suspect.
After reading the various levels of botched investigation that permeate through this story I would leave nothing to chance. A lot of my sentences begin with “That seems odd, they must have…” and it turns out they didn’t. (photograph the crime scene, conduct a full, forensic autopsy, trace the telephone number the call from Rockford was received, check the phone records of the parents to determine if they made any calls to Rockford immediately prior, etc. etc.
The factual answer to the OP is that there is much more to the evidence than the unused train ticket. And in fact they found that while they were already visiting his ex girlfriend from 50+ years ago to ask for a photo because they had new information.
The rest, until the trial commences, can only be speculation.
My speculation, based only on what I can deduce from the same stories you are reading, is that he did it. Not because of the new statements so much as the proven history of sexual assault he followed his entire life. That part isn’t hearsay or speculation.
A town described as being like Mayberry in the 1950’s, it is my speculation, probably didn’t have a history of frequent sexual assaults of children playing in their yards. From the time this man was a teenager, until the time he left town after the unsolved death of a sexual assault victim, it would appear that they did.
If this truly implicates the guy in a murder, my thought is that is why is was saved - as a threat and something to hold over his head. Or for the possibility of blackmail.
Where are you getting this from? I didn’t see anywhere that they didn’t check the phone numbers or trace the call, and the 2007 article quotes the state forensic pathologist regarding the state of the body, so some sort of forensic autopsy must’ve been done. The initial recovery of the body seems to have been done by a local sheriff, and does appear to have been botched, but the rest of the investigation was done by the state police and the FBI, and I haven’t seen anything that makes me think they were slacking.
No doubt, but you’d think if they were sitting on some killer evidence, it would be in the affadavit. But I guess we’ll find out.
There seems to only be one confirmed case of sexual assault, I’m not sure thats a “pattern”. And that case doesn’t really seem to be that similar to this one, in the first he seems to have seduced an underage runaway, in the latter he murdered an 8 year old. I’m not sure there’s even really any evidence that the 8 year old was sexually assaulted at all, though that seems the natural assumption for an 8 year old abducted and murdered by an older male.
That’s the problem it doesn’t say that they did either. We are spinning up our own speculative ideas about what might have happened and what might have motivated people. Had I been an investigating officer at the time and these ideas were occurring to me then, I would have recorded the mileage of his car at the last known date of service and how many miles it had at the time of the crime. I would have gone to see the telephone in person that the suspect allegedly called from to confirm who owns it, and if anyone could confirm it had been used by him. There’s a lot of things I might have done if what I speculatively imagine to be the case was really the case back then.
The main non-speculative botching I spoke of was the Two Guns part, the discovery of her body was probably the single biggest lead they had. (other than the one about an admitted child molester living a block away who fit the name and description of the killer but who had an alibi based on his parents statements alone and a collect phone call).
Yeah I see how a guy like that could be misunderstood.
I’m speculating again but another thing I would check is reported sexual assaults in Mayberry (Sycamore) in the years after he left town and changed his name for unstated reasons. My guess is that the only sexual assaults of children playing in their yards reported to law enforcement in the 10 years before or after the murder were those involving the suspect.
I don’t think he was an admitted child molester. He said he’d been involved in “sex play” several years ago with a girl (the names redacted, but presumably a sister or neighbor). Given he’s seventeen at the time, that means he did this in his early teens. Assuming the girl in question was willing, I’m not sure 14 year olds fooling around is really the same thing as being a child molester.
I don’t get what this means. You think he was raping people when he was seven?
I’m saying that my guess is in the 20 year period around the time of this murder the only reported sexual assaults of other children while they were playing in their yards in this neighborhood were those reported to the court to have been committed by the suspect.
Yea, you said he was an “admitted child molester” though. He never admitted to being a child molester, another girl accused him of it during the investigation.
I don’t think there are any court reports of children being molested in the 20 years around the murder that involved the suspect. The “court documents” in the quote above is the affadavit submitted in 2011 in Seattle. There doesn’t seem to be any legal case against the suspect except for the runaway we already discussed.
Unless the train ticket shows the passenger name along with the date, time and destination, I’d say it is worthless.
I have a ticket here on my desk for an event I recently attended. It says, “Admit One,” not “Admit Musicat.”
Now that he’s had his bail hearing during the course of this thread ($3 million) a scant few more details are being reported. They do answer a couple of our concerns:
So as I said, I wouldn’t leave anything to chance with this investigation. They allegedly never showed the only eye-witness a photo of the suspect at the time.
And this kind of put a twist on my understanding of the facts: stories I am reading today are worded in a way that imply he was already wanted for this crime by the state of Illinois anyway, before any of this new testimony.