DarkDante
12-01-2010, 04:04 PM
I pulled this off of websleuths. UM briefly profiled this interesting case in the fall of 1990. It's amazing that after all these years no leads have been turned up. I'll give my thoughts on the case at the conclusion of the article:
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For teenagers everywhere, the summer after high school graduation marks an exciting and yet anxious time of transition. Summer 1970 promised to turn out that way for Jo Ellen Weigel and Mike Cline.
Both were 18. They had graduated together from Lee’s Summit High School, and both were members of the National Honor Society. They had dated about a year, and now they were engaged to be married.
Jo Ellen Weigel lived with her parents in a working-class neighborhood less than a mile from old downtown Lee’s Summit. She spent her days at a summer job at Sears and evenings on dates with Mike. She wore his ring.
Mike Cline spent his summer days palling around with friends and water skiing at Lake Winnebago, an exclusive community founded in the middle 1960s near the boundary of Jackson and Cass counties. Mike lived there with his father, a veterinarian, his mother and three siblings in a home with an expansive backyard on the shore of the manmade lake. The family owned three boats.
On July 5, Mike planned to embark with about 200 other teenagers on a student trip to Europe and Israel. With the days dwindling before his scheduled departure, Mike and Jo Ellen made plans to go out. About 6:45 p.m. the evening of July 2, a Thursday, Mike picked her up at her home.
The plan was for Mike to drop off Jo Ellen at a girlfriend’s house after their date. She would spend the night there. The next morning, she was either to return home or to call home from the friend’s house and then go straight to her summer job. She took along an overnight bag.
That evening’s date began rancorously. Outside her home, Mike and Jo Ellen got into an argument. They stood there exchanging words for 20 minutes. Then they drove away.
It was the last time Jo Ellen’s family saw her alive.
On Friday morning, July 3, she did not call. The Weigels tried to reach Mike but could not. Friday evening, Jo Ellen did not come home from work. Her mother called the friend with whom Jo Ellen had planned to spend the night. The friend’s response, her mother said at the time, was muddled. The Weigels called Independence police, who said there was little to be done. No missing-person report was filed.
At 11 p.m. Friday, Mike finally returned the Weigels’ call. What he told them was at least unusual, at worst preposterous:
He and Jo Ellen had gotten married, he said, and then he had promptly put his new bride on a bus to Columbia, Mo., where a Weigel family member lived.
Jo Ellen’s parents drove to Columbia, but the relative told them she had not heard from their daughter.
The Weigels returned home and spoke to Mike again. This time, he told them that he had dropped her at a bus station but did not know whether she had actually boarded a bus.
Later, Mike went to the Weigel home and offered a third version of events. They had not married after all, he said. However, he had put her on a bus and sent a telegram to the Columbia family member. The family member knew nothing of that, either.
By now, the holiday weekend had wound on through Saturday, Independence Day, and into Sunday, July 5. With the question of Jo Ellen’s whereabouts unanswered, Mike boarded a plane, as scheduled, for the student trip overseas.
About 3:30 that same afternoon, a water skier on Lake Winnebago dropped into the water in a heavily traveled area near the community’s yacht club. When he came to the surface, he saw a body floating next to him. A boy driving the ski boat circled back to the scene. The body was that of a woman. The upper part of her body was wrapped with fishing net and her legs with ski ropes. Two one-gallon plastic jugs filled with water and a concrete block also were attached to the body.
The body was taken to a funeral home. There, her mother identified it as that of Jo Ellen Weigel based on a piece of cloth, part of a dress her mother had made, the one Weigel had been wearing the last time they saw her.
Investigators found that a yellow-and-white rope wrapped around the body was identical to rope on the Cline family speedboat. The concrete block came from the home of Mike’s best friend. In Mike’s car, authorities found a white towel with hair from Jo Ellen’s head. The hair had been removed by force.
Postscript: Mike Cline left the student tour of the Mediterranean and flew home but proved to be no help to investigators. He refused to talk and one day went skiing past the Lake Winnebago yacht club, where the police were working, and flashed them an obscene sign.
An autopsy revealed that Jo Ellen Weigel had been strangled — and also that she was four months pregnant. In late July, a Cass County grand jury indicted Mike Cline for her murder. When police when to arrest him at his home, he had disappeared.
Four decades after the Weigel slaying, he has never been found. In 2010 he would have turned 58.
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Seems as if Mike Cline has pulled a bit of a William Bradford Bishop on us doesn't it? The UM segment noted that it is believed that Mike Cline probably attended college under an assumed name in the early seventies. It is believed that he eventually graduated and pursued a career in the medical field possibly as a veterinarian. UM also noted that Mike and JoEllen were not only high school sweethearts but were engaged to be married and that Mike had purchased a ring for his fiance.
My feeling is that coming from a wealthy family, Cline was aided monetarily in his escape perhaps fleeing much like Bishop did to an unknown European country where he may practice medicine in some form or another to this day.
=============
For teenagers everywhere, the summer after high school graduation marks an exciting and yet anxious time of transition. Summer 1970 promised to turn out that way for Jo Ellen Weigel and Mike Cline.
Both were 18. They had graduated together from Lee’s Summit High School, and both were members of the National Honor Society. They had dated about a year, and now they were engaged to be married.
Jo Ellen Weigel lived with her parents in a working-class neighborhood less than a mile from old downtown Lee’s Summit. She spent her days at a summer job at Sears and evenings on dates with Mike. She wore his ring.
Mike Cline spent his summer days palling around with friends and water skiing at Lake Winnebago, an exclusive community founded in the middle 1960s near the boundary of Jackson and Cass counties. Mike lived there with his father, a veterinarian, his mother and three siblings in a home with an expansive backyard on the shore of the manmade lake. The family owned three boats.
On July 5, Mike planned to embark with about 200 other teenagers on a student trip to Europe and Israel. With the days dwindling before his scheduled departure, Mike and Jo Ellen made plans to go out. About 6:45 p.m. the evening of July 2, a Thursday, Mike picked her up at her home.
The plan was for Mike to drop off Jo Ellen at a girlfriend’s house after their date. She would spend the night there. The next morning, she was either to return home or to call home from the friend’s house and then go straight to her summer job. She took along an overnight bag.
That evening’s date began rancorously. Outside her home, Mike and Jo Ellen got into an argument. They stood there exchanging words for 20 minutes. Then they drove away.
It was the last time Jo Ellen’s family saw her alive.
On Friday morning, July 3, she did not call. The Weigels tried to reach Mike but could not. Friday evening, Jo Ellen did not come home from work. Her mother called the friend with whom Jo Ellen had planned to spend the night. The friend’s response, her mother said at the time, was muddled. The Weigels called Independence police, who said there was little to be done. No missing-person report was filed.
At 11 p.m. Friday, Mike finally returned the Weigels’ call. What he told them was at least unusual, at worst preposterous:
He and Jo Ellen had gotten married, he said, and then he had promptly put his new bride on a bus to Columbia, Mo., where a Weigel family member lived.
Jo Ellen’s parents drove to Columbia, but the relative told them she had not heard from their daughter.
The Weigels returned home and spoke to Mike again. This time, he told them that he had dropped her at a bus station but did not know whether she had actually boarded a bus.
Later, Mike went to the Weigel home and offered a third version of events. They had not married after all, he said. However, he had put her on a bus and sent a telegram to the Columbia family member. The family member knew nothing of that, either.
By now, the holiday weekend had wound on through Saturday, Independence Day, and into Sunday, July 5. With the question of Jo Ellen’s whereabouts unanswered, Mike boarded a plane, as scheduled, for the student trip overseas.
About 3:30 that same afternoon, a water skier on Lake Winnebago dropped into the water in a heavily traveled area near the community’s yacht club. When he came to the surface, he saw a body floating next to him. A boy driving the ski boat circled back to the scene. The body was that of a woman. The upper part of her body was wrapped with fishing net and her legs with ski ropes. Two one-gallon plastic jugs filled with water and a concrete block also were attached to the body.
The body was taken to a funeral home. There, her mother identified it as that of Jo Ellen Weigel based on a piece of cloth, part of a dress her mother had made, the one Weigel had been wearing the last time they saw her.
Investigators found that a yellow-and-white rope wrapped around the body was identical to rope on the Cline family speedboat. The concrete block came from the home of Mike’s best friend. In Mike’s car, authorities found a white towel with hair from Jo Ellen’s head. The hair had been removed by force.
Postscript: Mike Cline left the student tour of the Mediterranean and flew home but proved to be no help to investigators. He refused to talk and one day went skiing past the Lake Winnebago yacht club, where the police were working, and flashed them an obscene sign.
An autopsy revealed that Jo Ellen Weigel had been strangled — and also that she was four months pregnant. In late July, a Cass County grand jury indicted Mike Cline for her murder. When police when to arrest him at his home, he had disappeared.
Four decades after the Weigel slaying, he has never been found. In 2010 he would have turned 58.
=============
Seems as if Mike Cline has pulled a bit of a William Bradford Bishop on us doesn't it? The UM segment noted that it is believed that Mike Cline probably attended college under an assumed name in the early seventies. It is believed that he eventually graduated and pursued a career in the medical field possibly as a veterinarian. UM also noted that Mike and JoEllen were not only high school sweethearts but were engaged to be married and that Mike had purchased a ring for his fiance.
My feeling is that coming from a wealthy family, Cline was aided monetarily in his escape perhaps fleeing much like Bishop did to an unknown European country where he may practice medicine in some form or another to this day.