Footsteps in the Snow by Charles Lachman

Author:Charles Lachman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

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Q&A

Dave Zulawski’s involvement in the Maria Ridulph investigation had begun in March 2011, when he got a call asking him if he’d be willing to consult with the state police on an interesting cold case. Brion Hanley and Larry Kot drove over to his office, at Wicklander-Zulawski in Downers Grove, west of Chicago, to brief him on the case. Zulawski was acquainted with Kot from a previous investigation. Hanley he didn’t know, but Zulawski could see that they made a good team. Hanley would be doing the legwork in the field, while Kot fixated on establishing the timeline of Maria’s death, so critical in blowing up McCullough’s alibi that put him in Rockford, Illinois, forty miles from the scene of the kidnapping. That timeline could make or break the case.

Zulawski was regarded as one of the country’s premier experts on police interrogations and polygraph tests. Most of his business was in the private sector and dealt with loss prevention and employee thievery. His approach, known as the Zulawski Method, was to entice a bad guy into making a full “you’ve-got-me” confession through flattery, collaboration, and rationalizations for their crimes, rather than the in-your-face style of the traditional police third-degree that worked only in the movies.

Zulawski went over the case file with Hanley and Kot, and at the end of a long day, he said, “This is the right guy by everything I’m seeing here. He’s local, he matches the description, his alibi is falling apart.” Zulawski said that in his experience, grilling a man like Jack McCullough in an interrogation room wouldn’t work because “you might as well be talking to a shoe.” He assured Hanley and Kot that the Zulawski Method was definitely the only approach that had a prayer of working with somebody as manipulative and smart as McCullough.

“They don’t have the emotions or feelings of guilt that the rest of us have. It doesn’t work. Jack’s not an emotional offender. If he’s not a psychopath, he’s pretty darn close.”

Hanley and Kot wanted to know if Zulawski would be interested in leading the interrogation of Jack McCullough. Just one problem: they didn’t have the funds to pay for his time and effort. Not a problem, Zulawski said. “I’m in.” He said he was prepared to offer his services pro bono. Being a key player in solving the coldest case in American history? You bet he was interested—he was practically jumping out of his skin to get started.

• • • • • • • • •

Now it was June 29, 2011. Zulawski had invested four months in learning everything he could about Maria Ridulph and laying out the evidence that Hanley and the other detectives had assembled against McCullough. The stakes could not be higher. The time was finally at hand. McCullough was under arrest and en route to police headquarters.

It was five o’clock when McCullough arrived and was taken to the interview room.

“Everything in here is recorded,” a uniformed cop told him.

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