Michael Cline lead a privileged life. He lived in an affluent part of Missouri with his parents and three siblings in a home with an expansive backyard on the shore of Lake Winnebago, an exclusive community founded in the middle 1960s near the boundary of counties Jackson and Cass. He was also engaged to be married to his fiancée, Jo Ellen Weigel, whom Cline had been dating for a year and graduated with from Lee’s Summit High School in 1970. Both were members of the National Honor Society and Jo Ellen 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 Michael and wore an engagement ring he gave her. On July 5th, 1970, Michael planned to embark with about 200 other teenagers on a student trip to Europe and Israel. With the days dwindling before his scheduled departure, Michael and Jo Ellen made plans to go out. About 6:45 p.m. on the evening of July 2nd, a Thursday, Michael picked her up at her home. The plan was for Michael 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 an overnight bag with her. That evening’s date began rancorously. Outside her home, Michael and Jo Ellen got into an argument. They stood there exchanging words for 20 minutes, then drove away. It was the last time Jo Ellen’s family saw her alive. On Friday morning, July 3rd, she did not call. The Weigels tried to reach Michael 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 persons report was filed. At 11 p.m. on Friday, Mike finally returned the Weigels’ call. What he told them was at least unusual, at worst preposterous, and said that he and Jo Ellen had gotten married and then put her on a bus to Columbia, Missouri where one of her relatives lived. Jo Ellen’s parents drove to Columbia, but the relative told them she had not heard from Jo Ellen. The Weigels returned home and spoke to Michael 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, Michael went to the Weigel home and offered a third version of events. Michael said that he and Jo Ellen had not married after all, but however, had put Jo Ellen on a bus and sent a telegram to her Columbia, MO 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 5th. With the question of Jo Ellen’s whereabouts unanswered, Michael boarded a plane as scheduled for the student trip overseas. About 3:30 pm 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 womans body floating next to him. A boy driving the ski boat circled back to the scene. The upper part of her body was wrapped with fishing net and her legs with ski ropes. 2 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, where Jo Ellens mother identified it as being that of her daughter, based on a piece of cloth she has sewn into the dress, the same dress Jo Ellen was last seen wearing. An autopsy revealed that Jo Ellen had been strangled to death and was 4 months pregnant. Investigators found that a yellow-and-white rope wrapped around Jo Ellens body was identical to rope on one of the Cline familys speedboats. The concrete block came from the home of Michael’s best friend. In Michael’s car, authorities found a white towel with hair from Jo Ellen’s head. The hair had been removed by force. Michael 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 hand gesture. On July 27th, 1970, a Cass County grand jury indicted Michael Cline for Jo Ellen Weigels murder. When police when to arrest him at his home, he had disappeared and has not been seen since. Michael Cline is wanted on first-degree murder charges in the murder of Jo Ellen Weigel. Missouri authorities believe that Cline adopted an assumed name and attended college in the early 1970s and later began a career in the medical field, possibly a veterinarian. They also believe that Cline has been aided monetarily in hiding and may be in Latin America. He has not been seen since July of 1970 and would today be 61 years old.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 10:16:28 +0000
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