Man freed in girl's 1957 slaying speaks of prison, future
McCullough, a former police officer and security guard in Washington state, was released from prison on Friday after a judge vacated his 2012 conviction the same day based on a chief prosecutor's finding that he was 40 miles away when the 7-year-old was abducted, so he couldn't be the killer.
Later, he worked as a police officer in Washington state, and worked as a security guard at a housing complex when he was arrested in 2011.
Among the reasons investigators decided to look anew at McCullough, whom police had cleared as a suspect in the 1950s, was that one of his half-sisters told authorities that their mother said on her deathbed she believed her son may have killed Maria.
A scathing report from Dekalb County State's Attorney Richard Schmack in March described the investigation and trial of McCullough as deeply flawed, zeroing in on what he described as investigators' erroneous statements to a grand jury that altered the known timeline of events to render McCullough's alibi moot.
Most inmates viewed McCullough as the lowest of the low — a child killer — which he says put him in constant peril inside the maximum-security Pontiac Correctional Center until he eventually moved to protective custody.
A turning point in his bid for freedom came Jan. 1, when a new rule took effect that required Illinois state's attorneys to be proactive about reviewing plausible claims someone had been wrongly convicted.