The nation's oldest cold case has officially been solved.

There is an abundance of cold cases waiting to be solved. 55-years-ago, on December 3, 1957, a 7-year-old child, Maria Ridulph went missing from a street corner in Illinois.

Her body was found 5 months later in a field roughly 120 miles from her home.

Maria’s neighbor, Jack Daniel McCullough was a 17-year-old at the time of the crime and was recently convicted in her abduction and murder.

Although he claims he is innocent, the now 73-year-old will spend the rest of his life behind bars. During the initial days of the investigation, McCullough was questioned, but he had the perfect alibi - claiming he was miles away enlisting in the Air force and taking a physical.

However in 2008, it all fall apart when McCullough's sister called the police, stating that her dying mother has just told her that her own brother had been involved in the crime. When officials probed they were able to discredit McCullough’s alibi and found a train ticket that he had not used during the time frame of the crime.

Before the closure, "The case was believed to be the oldest unsolved murder in the nation to result in an arrest".