Background: Jane Ellen Hallberg was born November 19, 1948 to Richard and Pauline Hallberg in Ludington, MI. Richard Eric Hallberg was born on June 13, 1924 in Ludington, Michigan and Pauline J. Rebman was born on April 5, 1925 in Elroy, WI. Richard only finished two years of high school and was drafted into the US Army on June 30, 1942 in Kalamazoo, Michigan; while serving in April 1944 he suffered from malaria. The couple were married on December 17, 1945 in Wisconsin and went on to have three daughters together: Jane, Susan Jean (b. 1947), and Karen (b. 1949); they went onto divorce on August 6, 1968 after twenty years of marriage in Minneapolis. After Richard’s split with Pauline, he went on to marry Alice Cardeen Jacobson on May 6, 1968 in Cass, MI, who was born on February 1, 1928. He was married for a third time to Vicki Irene Hallberg, who was born on May 9, 1928.

Academics: during her time at Bloomington High School, Jane excelled at academics and was involved with a great number of after school activities and sports as well, including National Honor Society, Spanish Club, and Swim Club. It’s worth noting that the Iowa DPS had her classified as simply ‘disabled’ with no elaboration, and no clarification was ever provided. While she was in seventh grade Wakefield met a friend named Carol, and during their senior year of high school they both realized they had plans of attending Morningside College in Sioux City, and immediately decided to room together when they started their freshman year in 1966.

Marriage: in 1966, Jane got a job at Sioux City’s Public Museum, and in the spring of 1967 she met John Wakefield through a co-worker, who was a graduate student in business administration at the University of Iowa. After she completed her freshman year in the spring 1967, she moved in with John for the summer, and the two were married on September 9, 1967 in the Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. I’m assuming Jane had some sort of falling out with her father as he wasn’t mentioned in her wedding announcement at all and she was given way by a man named ‘George Ebans.’ For her wedding ceremony, Jane wore a ‘street-length gown’ that was fashioned of ‘off-white lace,’ and her head piece was a short illusion veil.’ At the time of their wedding John Wakefield was a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa, and the bride attended Morningside College before she transferred to the same school as John.

John Albert Wakefield was born on March 19, 1944 to George Rederich and Beth Louise (nee Carson) Wakefield in Sioux City, Iowa. Shortly after their wedding Jane transferred to The University of Iowa, where she graduated with a BS in psychology in 1970; she went on to teach in two area school districts (Prairie and WACO) before she accepted a position at Penn Elementary School in North Liberty, Iowa in August 1975.

Car Accident: around 2:30 PM on July 19, 1967, Jane was involved in a fatal accident after she pulled out of a service station at an intersection on Rocky Shore Drive during a heavy rainstorm: fifty-one-year-old Allen R. Neal died as a result of the injuries he sustained from the accident. Neal was employed at the Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids and had a wife (Viola) and two children (Brad and Joleen).  In October 1968 his widow sued the Wakefield’s along with Hoak Oldsmobile-Cadillac Company for $50,000, claiming her husband died from injuries he suffered from the car accident Jane caused (I couldn’t find the resolution of the case).

Divorce: Jane filed for divorce from John in March 1975 and moved out of the couple’s apartment (that was located at 923 Iowa Ave in Iowa City) and into the Bon Aire Mobile Home Park in Iowa City. Right before she vanished she had become romantically involved with another man, even though her divorce was being held up over disagreements on how she and John would divide the two businesses he owned.

September 6, 1975: twenty-six-year-old Jane Wakefield wore her blonde hair short at the time she disappeared and was 5’2” tall, weighed 112 pounds, was missing her #14 tooth and wore gold wire-rimmed eyeglasses. She had just started the school year and was employed as a math and reading teacher at Penn School in North Liberty, and had been last seen on a ‘cross-country bicycle ride’ with six of her girlfriends at roughly 2:30 PM on September 6, 1975 (one report said she ‘disappeared without a trace from her Iowa City mobile home sometime between late Saturday night on September 6, 1975 and early Sunday morning, September 7, 1975). Before they parted ways, Wakefield had told her friends that she had to get home for ‘an appointment,’ and a neighbor that had briefly spoken with her later in the afternoon told investigators that said nothing seemed out of the ordinary with her. Jane loved her friends and family and was heavily relying on their support during her divorce.

The ‘Jesus People:’ early reports speculated that Wakefield may have left the area with a religious group called the ‘Jesus People’ that had been camping near Coralville Lake at the time she disappeared despite her family never believing she would have joined a cult, and they told ‘The Gazette’ that Jane was ‘too much on top of things’ to join a cult, In an attempt to investigate the rumors, one of Jane’s friends, John Morrison, traveled to Huntsville, Arkansas where the cult had relocated to about ten days after she was last seen and searched the area with a sheriff’s deputy, but they didn’t find her. According to Morrison, ‘she was not the kind of person to get involved in that. She was just a little too much on top of things.’

The Investigation: Jane’s neighbors told police that in the late-night/early morning hours of Saturday, September 6^th they heard someone ‘yelling or screaming’ that came from the direction of Jane’s home, but they weren’t certain where it were coming from but assumed it came from a different neighbors party, and did not reach out to LE. When a friend of Jane’s stopped by the following day, no one answered so they left, and according to Iowa City Police Department Capt. Patrick Harney: ‘obviously, between Saturday night and Sunday morning, she disappeared.’

When Jane didn’t report to Penn Elementary School on the morning of Monday, September 8, 1975  her principal Larry Sharp tried calling her but was unsuccessful; from there, he reached out to the mobile home parks main office, and the manager contacted her boyfriend, who immediately came to meet him and together they went to her residence. According to Jeff Burnham of ‘The Gazette: ‘outside, they found her bicycle locked to the yard lamp, and her Fiat in its parking space. Inside, they found her purse and other belongings, but no sign of Jane Wakefield.’ Sharp also called the Iowa City police department and reported her as missing, who upon arrival found everything to be in order and they determined that nothing was missing or out of place; they also said evidence suggested she had recently showered before she left.

In October 1976 a thousand-dollar reward was offered by Wakefield’s parents for any information leading to the arrest of the person (or persons) that were responsible for the disappearance of Jane. According to Investigator Kidwell, ‘there was nothing in her home to indicate violence. It would appear that she had just left the trailer and was going to come back.’ About his estranged wife, John said ‘it seems to me if she decided to drop out and take a new identity, somewhere along the way she would have given me a call. She’s either decided never to resurface, or she’s dead.’ About Jane, Captain Patrick Harney said ‘you don’t have a body. You have no elements to prove there actually was a death. But it’s surrounded by circumstances all pointing to the fact that she’s dead.’

Iowa City police and the state department of Criminal Investigation officials in charge of the investigation said they approached Jane’s case as if it were a murder, not a disappearance and that although there was an unnamed suspect at one time, no one was ever charged in connection with her possible death.

Drainage: on October 2, 1975 Iowa City deputies drained two lagoons that were in close proximity to the mobile home park where Wakefield was residing at the time she vanished, and after the nine-and-a-half-hour-long process they never found any trace of her (one report said this was on September 10, 1975). The undertaking began after a man from Emporia, Kansas reported that they overheard a conversation between two male voices in a motel room discussing getting rid of a woman, ‘the same way we did that one back in Iowa City… in a sewage lagoon.’ 

A Break: four months after Jane disappeared, detectives got their first major break in the case when a Confidential Informant (who happened to be a friend of her husband, who was the main suspect) told investigators that John had killed his estranged wife, cremated her body in an industrial-scale incinerator behind the apartment building he owned (and lived in), then spread her ashes along a ditch on the Interstate-80 (one report said it was the I-40) just outside of Iowa City in the middle of the night (he actually deposited the majority of them in a rest stop garbage can). Wakefield had access to this piece of equipment thanks to one of his business endeavors, something that he and Jane were actively trying to figure out how to split up during their divorce. He had even gone so far as to shift the blame on her new boyfriend, and on September 6, 1975 had rented a car from the Cedar Rapids Airport that was a near match to the one driven by her new bf then drove to her residence late that night and choked her to death. He then put her in the trunk and drove it to his Iowa City apartment building.

According to the CI, Wakefield then placed a large amount of charcoal into an industrial sized trash incinerator, lit it, and placed Jane’s body inside; when the fire went out, he swept up its contents and placed them into a garbage can. The following night he drove out to the I-80 near Iowa City, pulled off to the side of the road then spread the bags contents along the ditch. Where Iowa detectives declined to disclose the identity of the CI, they confirmed he was friends with the suspect, and he passed a polygraph test. A series of lie detector tests narrowed the short list of suspects down to one, who refused to submit to one and questioned the ‘validity of such tests.’

At roughly 10:15 AM on the morning of January 30, 1976, Captain KL Stock of the Iowa City Police Department announced they had received ‘significant new evidence’ regarding the disappearance of Jane Wakefield. Armed with three search warrants for the apartment building the two businesses owned by John Wakefield, ‘Magoo’s Lounge’ (located at 206 North Linn Street) as well as ‘Four Cushions, Inc‘ (a billiards parlor located on Clinton Street). Captain Stock said a vacuum cleaner was taken from Wakefield’s residence and five more were seized across his two businesses; their contents were sent to ‘various labs’ for examination; additionally, forensic experts sifted through the contents of the incinerator and sent them to the state crime lab in Des Moines. Everything came back inconclusive.

From the apartment, Iowa state detectives along with agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation seized miscellaneous pieces of ‘bone debris,’ a small hunk of metal that looked to be a dental filling, along with a ‘small, white chip of bonelike material.’ They also seized five vacuum cleaners from the two businesses and the following week on February 6, 1976 roughly twenty detectives returned to the area and searched (on their hands and knees) through several miles of ditches north of Iowa City along the I-80; lab analysis of bone fragments found in the incinerator were inconclusive.

From the apartment, Iowa state detectives along with agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation seized miscellaneous pieces of ‘bone debris,’ a small hunk of gold that appeared to be a dental filling that was found in the base of the incinerator, along with a ‘small, white chip of bonelike material.’ The following week on February 6, 1976 roughly twenty detectives returned to the area and searched (on their hands and knees) through several miles of ditches north of Iowa City along the I-80.  Because of a lack of proper forensic technology, the bones were never confirmed to be Jane’s and tests on the fragments came back as inconclusive. John Wakefield was never charged with anything related to his estranged wife’s disappearance and is ‘officially’ not considered to be a suspect in this case (although her family strongly considers him to be a suspect).

According to Hank Reed, who was a friend of the couple, Jane was ‘a real nice, loving person. She liked kids a lot. That’s the reason she went into teaching.’ He also said that he believes his friend is dead but can’t elaborate further or explain why he feels that way. According to Willim Kidwell, a former Iowa state trooper turned PI, ‘ it naturally causes you to think that foul play was involved. Jane could be living happily somewhere, and no one would even know.’

I did notice a LOT of small inconsistencies that should have been caught in relation to this case:, as multiple articles have dates wrong. Iwa detectives believe Wakefield was the victim of foul play and is deceased. Looking into it, the apartment where John Wakefield was living at the time Jane disappeared was demolished after it was largely destroyed after a tornado ripped through Iowa City, so going back and searching through it isn’t a possibility.

923 Iowa Avenue: while doing my research, I learned the apartment where John Wakefield lived at the time his wife disappeared was demolished after it was mostly destroyed after a tornado ripped through Iowa City, so going back and searching through it for clues really isn’t possible.

Ted Bundy: on September 6, 1975, Ted Bundy was living in a room in a boarding house on East 1st Avenue in SLC (he was there until the following month), and by that time he had already been arrested and was under intense investigation by authorities (across multiple states). Oddly enough, it was the same day that the remains of Lake Sammamish victims Janice Ott and Denise Naslund and a third victim were discovered in Issaquah. At that time Ted was still actively working toward his law degree (despite the legal charges that were pending against him) and was still in a relationship with Elizabeth Kloepher (although their love had grown very rocky by that point). Bundy was actively trying to evade suspicion and was in the process of trying to sell his VW Big, which was later seized by LE.

Though not yet arrested for murder, police in Washington and Utah were narrowing in on Bundy and within weeks Carol DaRonch identified him in a police lineup, which lead to his first arrest in October 1975. I do want to say for the record, no part of me ever thought Ted was responsible for Jane’s disappearance: I kept coming across her story on Pinterest and I decided I had to write about her.

Robert Ben Rhoades: Ms. Wakefield is the first young woman I’ve written from Iowa, so I had to spend a fair amount of time looking into active serial killers that fit into that time frame, and one name that jumped out to me was Robert Ben Rhodes, aka ‘The Truckstop Killer.’ Rhodes is confirmed to have tortured and killed at least two couples in Illinois and Texas in 1989 and 1990, and he is suspected of torturing, raping, and killing more than fifty women between 1975 and 1990 based on data that has been collected about his driving routes and missing/murdered women that fit the profile of his preferred victims. At the time Rhoades was apprehended, he claimed to have been participating in these activities for fifteen years.

Jane’s Family: Jane’s mother Pauline remarried a man named John Burkhardt and died at the age of sixty-one on May 3, 1986 in Minneapolis. Karen Hallberg got married at the tender age of sixteen to twenty-two-year-old John McRew on August 24, 1968; the couple had three daughters together and according to his obituary they divorced in 1974. She died at the age of sixty-two on November 23, 2014.

Richard Eric Hallberg died at the age of fifty-one on October 1, 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri. According to his obituary, he attended school in Ludington, MI and was an employee of the Park Dairy while he lived there; before his death he lived in Kansas City and it’s worth noting that none of his daughters are listed by name in the write-up. His wife Vicki Irene Hallberg died at the age of forty-nine on May 10, 1977 and she is buried next to him in Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas (even though his obituary said he was married to a woman named ‘Rosemary’ at the time of his death).

Conclusion: seven years after she was last seen alive, Jane Ellen Hallberg-Wakefield was declared legally deceased on September 5, 1982. No charges were ever filed in relation to her disappearance. As of April 2026, no sign of Jane has never been found and she would be seventy-seven-years-old. Pauline Hallberg had her daughter’s Fiat, her last paycheck from the Iowa City Community School District, and other items totaling around $15,000 in value were placed in a conservatorship. Wakefield’s case has been considered ‘inactive’ since 1976.

According to a background check done by a Redditor, John has lived all over the US since his wife mysteriously disappeared in the fall of 1975, and has resided in North Sioux City, SD, Jefferson, SD, Iowa City, IA, and Oviedo, FL. Per their father’s obituary, his brother Robert Wakefield is an ordained minister and a Reverend and resides in St. Croix, which is an island in the US Virgin Islands.

Works Cited:
charleyproject.org/case/jane-ellen-wakefield
‘JANE ELLEN WAKEFIELD: Missing from Iowa City, IA – 8 Sept 1975 – Age 26.’ Taken April 16, 2026 from crimewatchers.ne
missingpersons.iowa.gov
Quinn, Megan. (January 20, 2022). ‘Meg’s Cold Cases: Jane Wakefield.’ Taken April 16, 2026 from thelibertylivewire.com
‘Missing: Jane Wakefield.’ (April 1, 2023). Taken April 16, 2026 from uncovered.com/cases/jane-wakefield