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 March� 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.