Jo Ellen Weigel: Left for dead - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

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:
=============
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.

WishfulDreamer · 12-06-2010, 02:23 PM

This case really gets to me. A picture perfect setting- or so it would seem- leading to such an appalling sign. What gets me is that this jerk has managed to evade capture for forty years. Jo Ellen was such a beautiful girl and no one would ever deserve having such a thing done to them. I read in another article that her parents died not too long after and were really grief-stricken

I can't believe he had the audacity to come back and do those gestures and then not get captured. Not to mention stringing the family along with false stories. I always thought her pregnancy may have caused this, but if they were engaged anyway, what drove him over the edge? Not wanting to be a father so soon? We can only wonder.
And is anyone else really weirded out by the finding of the hair? Was that done to make her more difficult to identify? Very odd. I really hope they find this jerk and make him pay!

DarkDante · 12-07-2010, 03:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WishfulDreamer

I can't believe he had the audacity to come back and do those gestures and then not get captured. Not to mention stringing the family along with false stories. I always thought her pregnancy may have caused this, but if they were engaged anyway, what drove him over the edge? Not wanting to be a father so soon? We can only wonder.

One thing I found interesting is that in reading one of the articles on this case it was revealed that although Mike bought an expensive ring for Jo Ellen, he refused to wear one himself. He obviously could have afforded another band for himself so I wonder if this is just a case of him not wanting to wear a ring or if there is something more to that?

crystaldawn · 12-07-2010, 07:56 AM

Thanks for the article. Now I remember this brief segment. Sounds pretty cut and dry. I wonder how hard authorities are looking for him.

I also remember a brief segment aired around the same time about a man who they believe killed his co-worker who may have also been his girlfriend. Sorry for the sketchy details and don't remember the name. I know the victim had red hair. I remember googling it long ago and it had apparently aired on AMW at one time. I wonder if there are any developments in that one.

queenofcupcakes · 04-12-2011, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crystaldawn

Thanks for the article. Now I remember this brief segment. Sounds pretty cut and dry. I wonder how hard authorities are looking for him.

I also remember a brief segment aired around the same time about a man who they believe killed his co-worker who may have also been his girlfriend. Sorry for the sketchy details and don't remember the name. I know the victim had red hair. I remember googling it long ago and it had apparently aired on AMW at one time. I wonder if there are any developments in that one.

I just rewatched the FBI special alert segment. I think the guy you're talking about is Raymond Scoville. Hes also suspected of the murder of two former girlfriends. The Cline-Weigel case disturbs me because I dont think they bothered looking much after a year or so. He's obviously settled and had a pretty full life since 1970. I'm sure he has kids in their 20s or 30s now.It reminds me of the film A Place in the Sun..except there was no other girl and Cline seems to be a very cold hearted individual that was living under the guise of the boy next door. Not a desperate poor kid that Montgomery Cliff portrayed.

queenofcupcakes · 04-12-2011, 10:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WishfulDreamer

This case really gets to me. A picture perfect setting- or so it would seem- leading to such an appalling sign. What gets me is that this jerk has managed to evade capture for forty years. Jo Ellen was such a beautiful girl and no one would ever deserve having such a thing done to them. I read in another article that her parents died not too long after and were really grief-stricken

I can't believe he had the audacity to come back and do those gestures and then not get captured. Not to mention stringing the family along with false stories. I always thought her pregnancy may have caused this, but if they were engaged anyway, what drove him over the edge? Not wanting to be a father so soon? We can only wonder.
And is anyone else really weirded out by the finding of the hair? Was that done to make her more difficult to identify? Very odd. I really hope they find this jerk and make him pay!

I think the hair in the towel may have come out while he was moving her body. He didnt look too muscular to me. And I would think it would be difficult for one 18 year old kid to drag the 'dead weight' of his girlfriend out there and throw her body in the water.
Did they ever mention where they thought she was actually killed? Was it out on the dock area since a rope from the family boat was used?
Do you think the pregnancy was the reason? At four months you're already starting to show and i'm sure that was why they were engaged to begin with. Theyd obviously been engaged long enough for her to flash the ring to a few friends and tell them. Maybe it was that,and the fact that she was getting further along made it seem more real? Its not like a girl in her position in 1970 would be likely to get an abortion. From the newspaper articles I looked up they gave the impression that her parents didnt know she was pregnant.

Matt C · 07-11-2012, 10:42 PM

It's unfortunate that with the passage of time Mike Cline would be particularly difficult to find.

MegtheEgg86 · 07-11-2012, 11:03 PM

This story always makes me sad and angry. Women are not just things to be used, and women and their children are CERTAINLY not just "problems" to get rid of so one can continue to enjoy a comfortable, pampered life.

It really disappoints me to see that apparently the trend some young men fall into of not taking responsibility for their actions--that it's solely the woman's to negotiate--seemed to be alive and well as early as 1970.

WishfulDreamer · 07-11-2012, 11:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by queenofcupcakes

I think the hair in the towel may have come out while he was moving her body. He didnt look too muscular to me. And I would think it would be difficult for one 18 year old kid to drag the 'dead weight' of his girlfriend out there and throw her body in the water.
Did they ever mention where they thought she was actually killed? Was it out on the dock area since a rope from the family boat was used?
Do you think the pregnancy was the reason? At four months you're already starting to show and i'm sure that was why they were engaged to begin with. Theyd obviously been engaged long enough for her to flash the ring to a few friends and tell them. Maybe it was that,and the fact that she was getting further along made it seem more real? Its not like a girl in her position in 1970 would be likely to get an abortion. From the newspaper articles I looked up they gave the impression that her parents didnt know she was pregnant.

I don't think they said where they thought she was killed. He may have killed her in his car or near the river. I'm guessing that he probably wanted her to abort or give up the child and she refused. After buying her expensive gifts and probably anger from not having her do what he wanted, he probably decided in the heat of the moment to kill her. Or maybe she broke the engagement over an argument over the pregnancy. Only he knows what happened and I really hope he's caught someday or that karma's already bested him.

Mysteryphile · 07-20-2012, 12:27 PM

This gives slightly more information plus has a picture at the bottom of what he might look like now.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobe...437&st=0&#last

12-01-2010, 04:04 PM	#1
DarkDante Member Senior Member Join Date: Jul 27, 2002 Posts: 1,569	Jo Ellen Weigel: Left for dead 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: ============= 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.

07-11-2012, 11:03 PM	#8
MegtheEgg86 Member Forum Veteran Join Date: Jun 19, 2008 Location: The Volunteer State Posts: 5,156	This story always makes me sad and angry. Women are not just things to be used, and women and their children are CERTAINLY not just "problems" to get rid of so one can continue to enjoy a comfortable, pampered life. It really disappoints me to see that apparently the trend some young men fall into of not taking responsibility for their actions--that it's solely the woman's to negotiate--seemed to be alive and well as early as 1970.
	__________________ "Why is she lying?, it makes me wonder. What is she hiding?, it makes me wonder." Go Vols!

12-06-2010, 02:23 PM	#2
WishfulDreamer Member Forum 3000 Club Member Join Date: Jun 01, 2009 Location: L.A. Posts: 3,868	This case really gets to me. A picture perfect setting- or so it would seem- leading to such an appalling sign. What gets me is that this jerk has managed to evade capture for forty years. Jo Ellen was such a beautiful girl and no one would ever deserve having such a thing done to them. I read in another article that her parents died not too long after and were really grief-stricken I can't believe he had the audacity to come back and do those gestures and then not get captured. Not to mention stringing the family along with false stories. I always thought her pregnancy may have caused this, but if they were engaged anyway, what drove him over the edge? Not wanting to be a father so soon? We can only wonder. And is anyone else really weirded out by the finding of the hair? Was that done to make her more difficult to identify? Very odd. I really hope they find this jerk and make him pay!

12-07-2010, 07:56 AM	#4
crystaldawn Member Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: Dec 17, 2002 Location: Illinois Posts: 4,261	Thanks for the article. Now I remember this brief segment. Sounds pretty cut and dry. I wonder how hard authorities are looking for him. I also remember a brief segment aired around the same time about a man who they believe killed his co-worker who may have also been his girlfriend. Sorry for the sketchy details and don't remember the name. I know the victim had red hair. I remember googling it long ago and it had apparently aired on AMW at one time. I wonder if there are any developments in that one.

07-11-2012, 10:42 PM	#7
Matt C Member Frequent Poster Join Date: Dec 11, 2011 Posts: 165	It's unfortunate that with the passage of time Mike Cline would be particularly difficult to find.

07-20-2012, 12:27 PM	#10
Mysteryphile I wonder what happened to her. Frequent Poster Join Date: Jun 02, 2009 Location: England via Iowa Posts: 320	This gives slightly more information plus has a picture at the bottom of what he might look like now. http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobe...437&st=0&#last