Jane Rowell buried in concrete tomb?

Last week, Bayou Justice recounted the disappearance of a missing author and stage actress who vanished in 1963. Wilton Clement, the man Jane Rowell left Southeastern College to marry, insisted that Jane fled to Hollywood, leaving him and their two babies behind. However, the family of Jane Rowell Clement believes her husband killed her and may know where he buried her body.

When she disappeared, Jane’s estranged husband told police she had abandoned her family for Hollywood. However, since her disappearance almost 50 years ago, Jane Rowell Clement has not appeared in any motion picture.

Perhaps, if Wilton Clement is correct, one or two of her descendants can be identified today. I have never found proof of that, but I did find some bizarre coincidences.

Jane’s full name was Hannah Jane Rowell Clement.

In 1993, another Hannah Jane Rowell, also 29 years old, mysteriously disappeared from her home in Eureka, California.

A 35-year-old Jane Clement, who looks identical to the missing Hannah Jane Rowell Clement, completed filming of a dark comedy entitled “Dead Ringer” in 2017.

Although this Jane Clement lives in Hollywood today, this fashion-model-turned-actress was born in the United Kingdom and cannot be related to the woman who vanished in 1963.

After she left Southeastern, Jane directed stageplays at Istrouma High School and worked again for the newspaper. Subscribing to correspondence courses and home studies, she worked to improve her craft and sold fiction to several pulp magazines.

On Christmas Eve, 1962, a fight with her husband over Jane’s writing became physical. The following day, Jane’s doctor admitted her to the Baton Rouge General Hospital for treatment of deep bruises on her neck and back.

The doctor discharged her on New Year’s Eve, but she never lived with Wilton Clement again. A Baton Rouge court granted her a legal separation and custody of her children on March 18, 1963.

Her family rented her and the kids a house on Sorrel Avenue in Baton Rouge. Jane told her brothers she feared living alone, so Wendy and Wylie visited often.

“We all did,” Janice Rowell, Jane’s first cousin, told me two weeks ago. “Jane feared for her life,” she said. “There was more than one trip to the hospital. He beat her often. She was usually black and blue. I remember one particular bruise on her neck.”

“She was always so afraid,” Janice remembered.

“We finally got the house and convinced her to get away from him. We collected things from everyone in the family to furnish the place,” Jane’s cousin explained. “The bedspread that went missing came from another cousin. She was happy to donate, hoping her parents would buy her a new one.”

When I interviewed Jane’s daughter, Janet, in 2019, she told me her mother named her after a Baton Rouge schoolteacher, Janet Robinson, Jane’s adopted mother. Janet said her namesake saw Jane Rowell years after her disappearance at a Rowell family reunion in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Janet Robinson told Janet Clement that the woman resembling Jane disappeared in a crowd before she could reach her. Questioning the couple the woman had been sitting with, both confirmed the woman’s name was Jane.

“Most of us girls looked alike,” Jane’s cousin, Janice, told me, “But with different complexions and hair color. Jane and I had the same color, and everyone called me Jan. I was younger, but people mistook me for Jane quite a few times. Strangers stopped me on the street years after she was gone, asking if my name was Jane.”

Saturday morning, April 6, 1963, Jane’s uncle, Wylie, drove up from New Orleans and spent the night at Jane’s. The following morning, Easter Sunday, Wilton Clement picked up the children for an outing. But, Wylie later told reporters Clement and Jane argued before he left.

After lunch that Sunday, Wylie returned to his New Orleans home but returned the following week.

Jane hadn’t answered her telephone for several days. When no one responded to his knock, Wylie broke the glass in the back door, unlocked it, and entered the kitchen. He found a hamper of mildewed clothing and half a pack of cigarettes on the clothes dryer.

“Some of the clothes were in the basket, and some were in the washer,” Jan remembered. “Someone interrupted her as she was loading,” she said.

The kids’ Easter baskets sat untouched on their beds.

Jane’s makeup and clothing appeared in place, excluding the outfit she had worn Easter Sunday. The only thing missing from the house was the pink bedspread donated by her cousin. Wylie told police he remembered it because he had slept on the couch and used it for cover.

Investigators from the Baton Rouge City police and the sheriff’s office questioned Wilton Clement an hour later.

Clement said he last saw Jane on Monday, April 8. He had returned the children the night before, but, he said, Jane called him that morning to come back and get them. He said she had a job offer, working for a wealthy club owner on Bourbon Street, and she needed to meet the man for lunch.

Clement said he had tried to call Jane later but got no answer. So he assumed she had taken the job and stayed in New Orleans.

“My father investigated Jane’s disappearance from day one,” Jan told me. Jan’s father was Winfred Quinn Rowell, Jane’s Uncle Wendy. “Uncle Wylie was more outgoing, talking to reporters, but the police knew my dad well,” she said.

“Dad told them he knew where the body was,” she remembered, “But they refused to believe him.”

“Walking distance from Jane’s house,” Jan said, “A well-known Baton Rouge business built a showroom. The morning after Easter, they poured the slab. Dad felt certain Jane was under that concrete, wrapped in that bedspread.”

Jan said the police and business owners shunned Wendy Rowell, refusing to consider disturbing the concrete. However, with the advent of ground-penetrating radar today, Jan hopes they will reconsider.

“I want to reach out to them,” Jan said. “We can’t bring Jane back, but we can bring her home. She deserves a decent burial, and our family deserves closure.”