Disappearance of Joan Risch

Joan Carolyn Risch
Risch in 1960
Born	Joan Carolyn Bard (1930-05-12)May 12, 1930 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Disappeared	October 24, 1961 (aged 31) Lincoln, Massachusetts, U.S.
Status	Missing for 63 years and 2 months
Other names	Joan Carolyn Nattrass
Alma mater	Wilson College (BA)
Occupation(s)	Editor Homemaker
Employer(s)	Harcourt Brace World, Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
Height	5 ft 7 in (170 cm)
Spouse	Martin Risch ​ (m. 1956)​
Children	2

Late on the afternoon of October 24, 1961, police visited an address in Lincoln, Massachusetts, United States, outside Boston, after a neighbor reported seeing a trail of blood leading from the house to the driveway. She had made the discovery after a young girl living in the house had returned from a playdate to find her mother, Joan Carolyn Risch (née Bard; May 12, 1930), absent. Several unconfirmed sightings of a disoriented Risch walking on nearby roads later that day were reported.

Blood matching Risch's type was found smeared in the kitchen, and other evidence initially suggested to police that she had been abducted, although her two-year-old son was found safe asleep in his room. Later, however, it was discovered that Risch had borrowed several library books about unsolved murders and disappearances, including one with similarities to her case. This led to speculation that she had staged her disappearance, perhaps to escape an uncomfortable domestic life; evidence was later discovered of a troubled past which may have motivated such a scheme. Other theories suggest that Risch suffered an accident on the nearby construction site for the Massachusetts Route 128 freeway. She has not been seen since.

Background

Joan Risch was born Joan Carolyn Bard in Brooklyn, New York, on May 12, 1930, to Harold and Josephine Bard. By the age of eight, her family had moved to Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, where, in February 1939, her parents died in a fire. This fire was later described as suspicious, although an investigation was ultimately inconclusive and the local fire chief deemed it accidental. Joan was visiting relatives in Brooklyn at the time. She subsequently went to live with her maternal aunt and her husband, who formally adopted her. Joan took their last name as her own and applied for a Social Security number as Joan Nattrass. It was later reported that she told an acquaintance she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather.

After graduating in 1952 from Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, with a degree in English literature, Joan went to work in the publishing industry. She started as a secretary, later moving to supervise the secretarial pool and ultimately became an editorial assistant at Harcourt Brace and World and later Thomas Y. Crowell Co. In 1956 she married an executive at one of the companies, Martin Risch, and left work to raise a family with him.

Living in Ridgefield, Connecticut, the couple had their first child, Lillian, the year after their wedding, and a son, David, followed in 1959. In April 1961 they moved to Lincoln, Massachusetts, where they easily integrated into the community. Joan became active in the League of Women Voters, while Martin pursued a career with a paper company in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Joan spoke of becoming a teacher after the children got older.

Disappearance

On the morning of October 24, 1961, Martin got up early and left the house in his car for Logan Airport to catch an 8 a.m. flight to New York City. It was a business trip he had planned earlier, with the intention of staying overnight in Manhattan. Shortly after his departure, Joan woke the children and served them breakfast. She took her son across the street to the house of a neighbor, Barbara Barker, and left with Lillian in her car, a blue 1951 Chevrolet, for an appointment with a Bedford dentist who had been recommended by a college friend named Sabra Morton.

Following the appointment, Joan took Lillian on a brief shopping trip to a nearby department store, paying in cash. At the family home on Old Bedford Road, milk and mail were delivered while the Risches were absent. Neither the milkman nor postman reported anything unusual at the residence when questioned later.

After picking up David at the Barker residence, Joan and the children returned home at roughly 11:15 a.m. Shortly afterward, a delivery driver for a dry cleaner came to the house to pick up several of Martin's suits. He entered the house to do so and did not recall anything out of the ordinary about Joan or the house. Following his visit, Joan changed from the more formal clothing she had worn to the dentist's appointment and her shopping into a blue housedress and white sneakers.

Joan made lunch for her children and put David into his room for his afternoon nap, which almost always lasted until 2 p.m. At 1 p.m., Barbara Barker brought her son, Douglas, also aged 4, over to play with Lillian. During the time they were there, they observed Joan come in and out to prune some plants and put the shears she had used back in the garage.

Shortly before 2 p.m. Joan came out again and took the children back across the street to the Barkers' house. She told the two she would be back. Lillian later told police she did not see anyone else in the area at the time. She and Douglas played on a swing set from which they could not see the Risch house. Around 2:15 p.m., Barker briefly saw Joan, wearing what she thought was a trench coat over her clothing, move quickly up her driveway, carrying something red with outstretched arms from her car towards the garage. At the time she assumed her neighbor was chasing one of the children. This proved to be the last confirmed time sighting of Joan.

An hour later, Virginia Keene, the daughter of the Risches' next-door neighbors, got off the school bus. As she neared her home, she recalled seeing an unfamiliar car, possibly a General Motors model, which was dirty and two-tone with one of the colors being blue. Five minutes later, another nearby resident said they stopped while driving up Old Bedford Road to let a car back out of either the Keenes' or the Risches' driveway. Both Virginia and her mother said there was no car in their driveway at that time.

Barbara Barker took Lillian back to her home at 3:40 p.m., intending to take her children out on a shopping trip with her. Believing Joan was still in the house, she left. When she returned at 4:15 p.m., Lillian came back to the Barkers' house, telling Barbara: "Mommy is gone and the kitchen is covered with red paint." Lillian's brother was found crying in his crib because his diaper needed to be changed. After Barbara went to the Risch house herself and verified Lillian's account, she called the police at 4:33 p.m.

Investigation

Sgt. Mike McHugh of the Lincoln police arrived at the house within five minutes. After briefly talking with Barker, he went into the Risch house. In the kitchen he found the bloody smears on the walls, an overturned table, and the handset of the wall-mounted telephone ripped loose and thrown in the wastebasket, which had been taken from its usual place under the sink and left in the middle of the floor.

McHugh believed Risch might have committed suicide and searched the house for her body. When he did not find it, he realized he would need backup searching the surrounding area. He called the desk officer who had dispatched him and advised him to call the police chief, Leo Algeo. It was possible, he believed, that the entire department would need to be involved.

The Lincoln police called local hospitals and asked to be notified if a woman matching Risch's description showed up, or already had been admitted. Barker had called Martin's company to find out where he was; when she learned he was in New York on business, the Massachusetts State Police called him there to inform him of the family emergency. He changed his plans and caught the next flight back to Boston.

In the house, police found further clues. Four letters delivered that day to the mailbox at the foot of the driveway had not yet been brought in. In the kitchen, the telephone directory was found to have been opened to the page where emergency numbers could be written down, although none had been. Martin explained that an empty liquor bottle found in the wastebasket was one he and his wife had finished the night before, but could not explain where empty beer bottles found in it might have come from.

Joan had left behind the trench coat she had worn to the dentist that morning but appeared to have taken a plainer cloth coat. Also in the house was her pocketbook. Investigators determined that after her purchases since cashing the check the previous evening, she would have had less than $10 ($102 in 2023) left.

Possible later sightings

In canvassing the neighborhood, police found several other residents who reported possible sightings of Joan after Barker had last seen her. At 2:45 p.m. that afternoon, a woman wearing clothing similar to what Risch had last been seen in, along with a kerchief over her head tied around her chin, was seen walking along the north side of Massachusetts Route 2A, west of its junction with Old Bedford Road, headed toward Concord. She appeared to be wandering, hunched over as if she were cold, and appeared untidy.

A similarly dressed woman, with blood running down her legs, was seen walking north on the Route 128 median strip in Waltham between 3:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., just north of Winter Street. She, too, seemed disoriented and appeared to be cradling something at her stomach. Another sighting, reportedly around 4:30 p.m., had the woman walking south along Route 128 near Trapelo Road.

Police also received some reports of the car that Virginia Keene had reported in the Risches' driveway. Their regular milkman stated that he had seen a car of that description when he made his morning delivery at the Risch residence five days earlier. Another neighbor told investigators she had seen a blue two-tone car parked on Sunnyside Lane, a street that intersected Route 2A near Old Bedford Road, at 4:15 p.m. She saw a man get out, cut some branches from the nearby woods, and put them in his vehicle. Another man said he saw a light blue 1959 Ford sedan parked along Sunnyside Lane at 2:45 p.m.

Blood evidence

Some of the blood smears in Risch's kitchen as photographed by local police on the night of her disappearance.

Although the blood evidence was plentiful, investigators could not conclude from it what might have occurred. Large smears were on the kitchen walls and floor; some were on the phone as well. Three bloody fingerprints were unidentified; in Joan's absence, they could not be compared with hers. A roll of drawing paper was on the floor; one had been used to wipe some blood, possibly off of a hand.

Also, a coverall and pair of underpants belonging to David were on the floor. Both were bloodied as well, possibly from an attempt to clean up the blood. The coverall also appeared to have been pressed into the floor, as if a heavy weight—such as a body—had lain on them for some time. Police said later that while the bloodstains in the kitchen might have resulted from a struggle, they seemed more consistent with someone staggering around and trying to support themselves following an injury. But the kitchen was not the only place blood was found, and the blood found elsewhere in the house—as well as outside—complicated that narrative. A 1⁄8-inch-wide (3.2 mm) drop was on the first step of the stairway. Two more of similar size were found at the top of the stairs, along with eight in the master bedroom and one near a window in the children's bedroom.

Another trail of blood led out of the kitchen into the driveway. It ended at Joan's car, which was stained in three places: the right rear fender, the left side of the hood near the windshield, and the very center of the trunk. Investigators found this last one particularly hard to interpret.

It could not be determined where the bleeding might have started: upstairs, in the kitchen, or the driveway; all possibilities were supported by the evidence. Also open was the question of whether Joan had left under her own power or had been accompanied or even carried, perhaps involuntarily. The end of the trail in the driveway might have indicated that she had gotten into another car at that point, but that was not certain either.

What investigators did not find was also significant. Despite the large bloody smears on the kitchen floor and evidence of activity elsewhere in the house, there were no bloody footprints. Whoever had been walking there had either been extremely careful or very fortunate.

The blood was found to have been type O, which is both the most common and the type Risch was known to have. A state police chemist found that despite appearances of a severe wound, the total blood shed amounted to merely half a pint (240 ml), which would not have suggested a life-threatening injury.

Library records

In the wake of Joan's disappearance, Sareen Gerson, a reporter with Lincoln Fence Viewer newspaper, went to the town's public library to research similar cases as background. In one of the books she checked out, about the purported disappearance of Brigham Young's 27th wife, she saw that Joan had borrowed the book in September, a month before her disappearance. In another, Into Thin Air–about a woman who, like Risch, had left behind blood smears and a towel when she went missing–Gerson again found Risch's signature on the checkout card.

Gerson reported her findings in the newspaper. A group of library volunteers who looked through records found that Joan, a regular borrower, had taken out twenty-five books over the summer of 1961, many of which also had to do with murders and missing person cases. Based on this, Gerson and her colleagues at the newspaper believed Joan might have staged the crime scene and disappeared voluntarily.

Possible suspect

Police investigated a man on whom neighbors had cast suspicion, Robert Foster of East Walpole. In 1959, Congress had designated an area which included the Rischs' neighborhood as Minute Man National Historical Park, recognizing its historical importance as the route British troops had taken when they marched out of Boston to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, considered the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Plans called for acquiring and removing all structures built after 1775, thus restoring the area to its historic appearance. Foster, a purchasing agent with the National Park Service, had been visiting homes in the area to discuss the project.

According to a state police detective who interviewed him a week after the disappearance, some of the women Foster had talked to felt he had "overstayed his welcome." Records showed Foster had visited the Risch home on September 25, a month before Joan vanished. On the day she disappeared, Foster told the detective, he went out for lunch with his supervisor around 1 p.m. By 3 p.m., he recalled, he went back to the Lincoln area to meet with a property appraiser. The supervisor verified the account and also vouched for two civil engineers who had been working in the area for him making preparations for the park, saying they were in his office around 3 p.m. as well.

Subsequent developments

Rewards for information that would close the case were offered by the state police, the town of Lincoln, and the Boston Record American newspaper, which ran an extensive package of articles about the case on the first weekend of 1962. However, no useful leads were developed after the initial investigation. Bodies found in the region in later years proved not to be Joan.

Martin continued to live in the same house and raise his children. He never had his wife declared legally dead. In 1975, the National Park Service, in developing the area for the park, bought the Risches' and others' properties and moved the Risch house to Lexington; Martin moved to another house nearby. He died in 2009 at the age of 79.

Theories

With no further evidence emerging after the initial investigation, all theories of Joan's fate have remained, and the case maintains its open status. Joan's library book history and her difficult past have supported Gerson's theory that her disappearance was planned as a way to escape a dissatisfying life. But Sabra Morton, the college friend who had recommended the dentist Risch visited that morning, said that was unlikely, as Joan was very content with her life as a suburban housewife.

"I think Joan is almost certainly dead," Morton told The Boston Globe in 1996. "She would never have left her family on her own." The reported sightings of a woman who matched Risch's description walking along area roads have lent support to a theory that she met an accidental end. In the 1990s, one investigator believed that she might have become disoriented and fallen into a pit along the Route 128 construction site, where she might not have been able to extricate herself and ended up buried when the road was finished.

Martin rarely talked about the case in his later years. On one occasion when he had, the Globe reported, he believed his wife was still alive. He speculated that she may have had amnesia or a psychological break and had forgotten how to return home. Joan neither had a history of mental illness, nor had any cases been reported in her family.

Leo Algeo continued to pursue the case, even after his retirement from the police force in 1970. He told the Globe it was "sort of a stone around [his] neck." He had a theory but preferred not to share it. "I thought they'd find a body or bones or something ... Things do turn up. People don't disappear without a trace." Algeo, too, died in 2009, the last of the original investigators on the case.

See also

• List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1910–1990

External links

• Joan Risch at the Charley Project
• Joan Risch at The Doe Network
• Disappearance of Joan Risch at NamUs