A man who was recently sentenced for a murder committed almost 60 years ago claims he was wrongfully convicted and that he was not given the proper chance to defend himself.

Jack Daniel McCullough, 74, was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for kidnapping and murdering a 7-year-old girl in 1957, CNN reported. But McCullough, an ex-police officer, claims that he was miles away when little Maria Ridulph disappeared from a street corner in Sycamore, Illinois. There were also no eye witnesses or forensic evidence to link McCullough to the girl, according to his appeal filed Thursday.

"The evidence against Jack McCullough was so unreasonable, so improbable, and so unsatisfactory as to create a reasonable doubt that he was responsible for a 1957 murder, kidnapping and abduction of an infant," McCullough's 80-page appeal states, CNN reported.

Ridulph's murder is said to be the oldest cold case ever prosecuted in the U.S. The child was last seen on the corner of Sycamore's Archie Place and Center Cross Street on Dec. 3, 1957. It wasn't until a year later when her body was found, left on the side of a highway 120 miles from where she vanished.

McCullough was allegedly 40 miles away in Rockford speaking to military recruiters at the time of the girl's disappearance. Records also indicate that McCullough placed a collect call home asking for a ride, however those phone records have since been lost, CNN reported.

Other evidence, which McCullough said is flawed, consisted of "personal memories of what occurred 55 years ago; a photo identification made 53 years after the incident; testimony from jailhouse informants; innocuous statements from the defendant; and an improperly admitted and inconclusive statement from the defendant's mother while on morphine and Haldol just before her death," according to the appeal obtained by CNN.  

Arguments on the appeal from both sides are expected to be heard by this summer.