I agree. There is a resemblance.
http://www.crimeandjustice.us/forums/lofiversion/index.php?t6433.html
Young mother, lover still missing after 40 years
Forty years ago, Jackie Rains-Kracman and Melvin Uphoff vanished. The two families met for the first time recently in Columbus seeking to ease the lingering pain and, perhaps, find a clue that had been overlooked in the case. What follows is the story of the disappearances and the families' gathering.
By MEGAN STROMBERG, Special to the Telegram
COLUMBUS - Even though she was 9-years-old the last time she saw her sister, Becky Leslie was so certain the woman she locked eyes with at Wal-Mart in 1999 was her sister that it sent her into a panic attack.
When Leslie, a Wal-Mart employee, returned from helping another checker, the woman in jean capris and a pink blouse was gone.
Her co-workers said she probably just saw an angel.
Leslie disagrees. She is adamant the woman was her older sister, Jacquelyn Ann "Jackie" Rains-Kracman, who never returned after telling her family she was leaving with a girlfriend for a wedding in Glenwood, Iowa, on Sept. 24, 1965. Everything was the same, the part in her hair, the mole above the right side of her lip, her deep brown eyes.
"I kick myself for not talking to her right away," Leslie said.
The only woman to marry in Glenwood that day has said she doesn't know anyone by that name. Nor does she recognize the name of Jackie's friend, Sally, who was supposed to take her to the wedding.
Sally returned home.
Nineteen-year-old Jackie never has.
She disappeared without a trace.
Law enforcement officials - from the Butler County Sheriff's Office to the FBI and CIA - have told her they never found any sign of foul play. The Rains family thinks Sally may know why Jackie was leaving, or where she was truly planning to go. They do not think she was involved in her disappearance. They have asked her for help, but they still don't have answers.
One of Jackie's younger sisters still can't forget how her sister was packing two very large suitcases for the trip. Something didn't seem right.
"She was packing everything. I asked her 'Why?' She said she needed to put these clothes somewhere," Sharon Henggeler recalled during a recent family interview.
Henggeler, now of Omaha, was just a year younger than Jackie. She remembers the day clearly.
The Rains' children were still helping their parents unpack things in their Columbus home. The family had just moved across town. Jackie, meanwhile, had already been married and given birth to a boy and a girl. A few weeks earlier, her husband had filed for divorce on Sept. 11. She was now living with Sally.
Henggeler remembers helping her father move the washing machine when a friend stopped by, asking her to go riding around. She agreed, asking if they could stop by and visit her sister, Jackie, before she left for the wedding in Iowa. The family agrees the "wedding trip" was just a story.
That's when Jackie was still packing her suitcases.
"It made me feel uneasy. Months before she said when her ship came in, she would be leaving," Henggeler recalled. When she asked Jackie what she meant by that, Henggeler was told "she would be leaving" and would go where it was sunny and warm.
Henggeler asked her sister who would care for her children, then 2 and 6 months old. Jackie said she was not going to take them cross country.
After saying goodbye to Jackie, Henggeler and her friend drove around Columbus. She remembers seeing her sister and three of her friends drive by, headed south over the viaduct. Her sister, she said, was crouched down in the backseat, as if to hide she was in the vehicle.
Still, Henggeler said the three friends Jackie was with refuse to say where they took her.
The family does not suspect them.
"I've never understood. If the three people who saw her last, if they did nothing criminal, why won't they say where they took her?" Henggeler wondered recently during a gathering with her siblings, Jackie's son and grandsons and another family.
But they do want some answers.
So does Melvin Uphoff's family.
Even though their dad went missing 40 years ago, at a time when two of the kids barely knew them, his children want answers. They wonder, is he dead? Did he leave with Jackie?
Did the couple start a new life together? Has someone in the area kept them abreast of their family's lives?
Rumors were rampant around the tiny community of Rising City when the couple disappeared. The Rains's say they had heard their sister was having an affair with 30-year-old Uphoff, who managed the co-op where Jackie's husband worked.
His wife at the time, Myrna, confirms there were rumors.
She and Melvin had been married for nearly a decade and had already welcomed four children to their home when Jackie's husband came to the door with the news.
"Her husband came to the door and said they were having an affair," the quiet woman remembered.
That was three months before the couple disappeared.
When confronted with the news by Myrna and his mother, Melvin denied the allegations.
Myrna said he was "OK" for about a month, but then began acting differently.
On Oct. 24, 1965, Myrna, Melvin and their four children, ages 10, 8, 2 and 6 months, spent the day together in Shelby. They went roller-skating and had stayed at a hotel before returning home to Rising City.
Myrna remembers it clearly.
She was getting baby Marché ready for bed when Melvin came in the room and said he was going back to Shelby for a beer. He asked if Myrna wanted to go with him. She asked why he was returning there, when the family had just left the town. Myrna declined his offer.
That was 11:30 p.m.
Melvin left in a 1954 blue and white Oldsmobile.
That was the last time she saw her first husband. He didn't give any indication of never returning.
He didn't take any clothes. The only thing Myrna discovered missing was Melvin's coin collection.
The car, his coin collection, Melvin. None of the three has been found.
When Melvin didn't show up for work, Myrna went to his parents and said he didn't come home the night before. They told her to "go back into town and be quiet."
That was Monday. When Myrna asked the next day if they should report him missing, his dad and uncle finally filed a report Tuesday evening.
The family suspects the delay was because the elder family members were trying to protect Myrna and her children.
Meanwhile, Jackie was not reported missing until 1994. Her parents told her eight siblings not to mention anything to anyone. Four of the children recall never mentioning Jackie's absence, not even to their aunts, uncles or cousins. If anyone asked, they were told to say she had moved.
But Leslie recalls what one aunt said.
"She said she saw a woman at a rest stop. She said she sounded like Jackie."
They're tired of being quiet. They feel they have a right to have answers. So do Jackie's children. Her daughter, Denise, contacted the Rains family when she was 18. They had a picnic with Denise and her brother, Todd. The relationships have continued to grow since the reunion.
"How do you start a process like that with people you've never known," Todd said, adding that he could have met some of them on the street over the years.
When asked what he thinks happened, Todd hesitated before answering.
"It's more of a Š in the heart, I wish I knew, but Š " he trailed off. "I guess I have been moving along with my life and hoping after 40 years somebody would come and approach me and say, 'Hey, I'm your mom.'"
He admits that he hoped for that news before Jackie's parents died.
"You don't know. You don't know if they've come in touch with you," Todd said in a firm voice that commanded attention from his aunts and uncles gathered in the room.
Maybe it's a coincidence, but Leslie says she saw a white car at her mother's funeral. A man and a woman sat inside, watching from a distance. That same car appeared at her father's funeral. She admits it could be a coincidence, but she wants to believe more.
Melvin's family, meanwhile has seen some oddities as well.
Former Butler County Sheriff Leo Meister attended a family funeral, looking for Melvin to show up in 1973. He didn't.
The family still has questions. Why did Melvin's missing person's file contain only about 50 copies of a "Wanted" poster distributed in 1967 for non-payment of child support. Why haven't family members been asked about the days prior to his disappearance.
His family is so desperate for answers that his oldest son, Michele Sells of Bellwood, has placed ads in The Banner-Press newspaper.
The latest 4x3 inch ad appeared Sept. 1 along with a picture of Melvin and read:
"We are still looking for any information on the disappearance of this man. Age 30. Now 70. Disappeared Oct. 24, 1965, from Rising City, Nebraska. Left in a blue and white 1954 Oldsmobile. Please send information to Michele Sells."
Sells came to the interview with a black Rubbermaid tote full of a 4-inch white binder, a 2-inch black binder and several spiral notebooks. Court records, hand-written notes, letters from law enforcement, news clippings and other things appeared as Sells searched through the file. Along with the paper files, Sells also arrived with a videotape of her father made from an old 8 mm film. On the tape, Jackie and her family appeared. They had stopped by the Uphoff house. Myrna doesn't remember why. When asked, she said she was not friends with Jackie.
The room fell silent as the two families watched a few minutes of the tape, in which Jackie sat in a white blouse. Her husband sat nearby, holding baby Denise.
"We want an answer," Melvin's youngest, Marché said.
"Even if they don't want to be found, it would be nice to know if they're alive," Todd said.
Rising City residents have told Melvin's family they think he tried to contact them two years after disappearing. Sells said a man phoned the family's old phone number, asking for Myrna. When told she didn't live there, the man hung up.
Just seconds later, the phone rang at a family member's home.
"They said it sounded like they were calling from a pay phone," Sells said. Eventually, the operator interrupted and told the caller to insert more coins for the call.
Sells has also been in contact with law enforcement officers locally and nationally. She continues to ask Meister for answers and has also contacted FBI and CIA agents. However, both families say they are told no crime was committed. Sells has even contacted professional locators, with no luck.
Myrna even spent a number of years searching for answers. For a number of years, she traveled to David City to ask Meister for answers.
"I was in a state of shock," she said about her husband's disappearance. Six months later, Myrna moved to Shelby with her children so they could be closer to her extended family. "I knew I had to be mother, I knew I had to be a dad, knew I had to clothe and feed them."
Forty years later, she admits she has moved on and is comfortable with the search Sells has waged.
"I don't want him back," Myrna said.
Melvin's children say they aren't searching for a relationship with their father. They just want answers.
Both families are certain that if the couple disappeared today, whether willingly or otherwise, technology would facilitate a more comprehensive search. Media coverage, alone, would shine light on the cases.
"It would have been reported right away," Henggeler said.
Over the years, Todd has maintained a relationship with his father, Dennis. Todd recalls a conversation Dennis had with a state trooper in March of this year.
"I saw his eyes. He misses her, but he doesn't know where she's at," Todd said. "His eyes were like he was telling me, I wish I could tell you where she was at."
Both families see news reports of missing couples and young adults and their pain is revisited all over, they said.
"My heart goes to them and I pray they find them," Marché Augustine said, adding that it hurts, even though she wouldn't know the sound of her father's voice if she heard it. Throughout the interview, she switched between calling him by his first name and referring to him as her father.
She recalls that while eating in a cafe with her mother a few years ago, she saw a man that caught her attention.
"I asked mom, 'Isn't that Melvin over there?'"
Henggeler admits she can't watch news reports about missing people who are found.
"I just cry," she said amidst tears.
Several times throughout the families' meeting, she cried.
"You hang on to hope. You think maybe someday you'll get a knock on the door, and it will be her or a brother or sister who have come to say 'We found her,'" Henggeler said.
"You have to have faith in God to have the strength to get through it."
Still, Henggeler asked how long questions can go unanswered.
"How long can a soul survive not knowing?"
The Rains's parents died not knowing the truth about their daughter.
John Rains of Columbus said if he could ask his late wife the answer, he would.
"They know now," he said about his parents.
Henggeler said if Jackie had returned home 15 or 20 years after disappearing, she would have "read her the riot act." Now, though, she just wants to hug her.
"Every Mother's Day, mom thought she would come back," Leslie said about her oldest sister.
Leslie said she believes her sister is still alive and she wants her to know she still loves and cares for her. She says the truth will happen eventually.
"God only knows when that will be," she said.
Nebraska State Patrol Sgt. Robert Frank, director of the state's Cold Case Division, confirmed his office is again looking into Jackie and Melvin's cases. He said he is working in conjunction with the Butler County Sheriff's Department.
"We're still investigating it and running down new leads," Frank said.
Butler County Sheriff Mark Hecker said he originally directed both families to Frank because of the resources at the department's disposal. He will be meeting with Frank at the end of the month to discuss the case.
Former Butler County Sheriff Leo Meister, who was in office at the time of the disappearances, could not be reached for comment.