The Strange disappearance of Joan Risch Remains a Mystery

“Mommy is gone and the kitchen is covered in red paint,” four-year-old Lillian Risch tells her neighbor. This starts the search for 31 year old, Joan Risch of Lincoln, Massachusetts on October 14,1961. Despite many bizarre sightings around the time she went missing, we’re none the wiser to what happened to Mrs. Risch 57 years ago.

Who was Joan Risch?

Life started out tragically for Joan Risch, born Joan Carolyn Bard, in 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of nine, her family moved to New Jersey, and shortly after tragedy struck. One day while Joan was in school, her family’s home caught on fire and sadly her parents didn’t survive. She was sent to live with an aunt and uncle whom she barely knew. She found it difficult to adjust, but still managed to do well in school and go on to get an English literature degree from Wilson College in Pennsylvania. After graduating, Joan worked in publishing, first as a secretary, then worked her way up to editorial assistant. In 1956 Joan married Martin Risch and eventually left her job to stay home with their two children, David and Lillian. In April 1961, the Risch family moved to Lincoln, Massachusetts. Later that same year Joan would disappear.

The Day of the Disappearance

The morning of October 24, 1961 started out ordinarily. Martin Risch left that morning for a business trip to New York and Joan started the day by making breakfast for the children. Later, Joan took her son, two-year-old David, to neighbor Barbara Barker’s house while she brought Lillian along with her to a dentist appointment. After the appointment, mother and daughter went on a quick shopping trip to a department store. While they were gone, the milk man and mail man both made deliveries to the Risch home and didn’t notice anything unusual.

Joan picked up David at Barbara Barker’s home and returned to her own home a little after 11 am. Soon after, a delivery man from the dry cleaners came to pick up Martin’s suits to have them cleaned. When he entered the house, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary. After he was gone, Joan changed out of her more formal clothing she wore out earlier into a more comfortable blue house-dress and white sneakers. She made lunch, then put David down for a nap. Around 1 pm, Barbara Barker brought her four-year-old son, Douglas, over to play with Lillian.

Shortly before 2 pm, Joan took Lillian and Douglas back to Barker house and stated that she would be back soon. Around 2:15 pm, Mrs. Barker saw Joan wearing a trench coat and carrying something red in her arms, hurrying from her car to the garage. Mrs. Barker didn’t think much of it, assuming that she may have been trying to catch David as he ran away. This would be the last confirmed sighting of Joan Risch.

At 3:40 pm, Mrs. Barker took Lillian back home, so that she could go shopping with her kids. She did not see Joan at this time, but assumed that Mrs. Risch was at home, so she left. When Barker returned home at 4:15, Lillian came back to her house saying “Mommy is gone and the kitchen is covered in red paint.” Lillian also told her neighbor that David was in his crib crying because he needed a diaper change. Mrs. Barker went to the Risch home to confirm Lillian’s story and saw that what Lillian had called paint was actually blood, then she proceeded to call the police at 4:33 pm.

The Bloody Scene

Five minutes later Sgt. Mike McHugh arrived on the scene to find a small overturned table and bloody smears on the kitchen floor and walls. The wastebasket, which was usually kept under the sink, was sitting in the middle of the floor. In the wastebasket was the telephone, which had been torn from the wall where it was normally mounted.

McHugh’s first thought was suicide and he began a search of the house and grounds looking for Joan’s body. When he found nothing, he called for backup so that a larger search could be made. Police called local hospitals to see if she was there with no luck. They called Martin in New York to inform him of what happened and Martin got on the next flight back home.

Detectives found a telephone book opened to the page where emergency contacts could be listed, though no contacts had been written there. An empty liquor bottle was found in the trash and Martin said that he and Joan had finished it last night, but he didn’t know where the beer bottles came from that were also in the trash. The trench coat that Mrs. Barker had seen her in was left behind and it was thought that Joan was instead wearing a plainer cloth coat. Also left behind was her purse. Detectives determined that she would have had less than $10 ($80 in today’s money) left with her after going shopping earlier that morning.

The small overturned table was found in the hallway leading from the kitchen into the living room. This table was usually set in the kitchen underneath the wall-mounted phone on the wall. There was a roll of paper towels on the floor and someone had used a wad of them in an attempt to clean up some of the blood. There were also three bloody fingerprints found, but it was not known if they were Joan’s because police didn’t have her prints to compare them to. A pair of coveralls and underwear belonging to David were found in the kitchen as well. They were bloody and may have also been used to try to clean up the blood. Police said that the coverall looked as if it had been pressed to the floor by a heavy object, such as a body, for a period of time.

Small drops of blood were found elsewhere in the house and outside as well. There was a small drop of blood on the first step leading upstairs. Two more drops at the top of the stairs. Eight drops of blood were found in the master bedroom and one drop was found near a window in the children’s room. A trail of blood led from the kitchen outside to Joan’s car, still parked in the driveway. The car itself was stained in blood in three different areas: the right rear fender, the left side of the hood near the windshield, and the center of the trunk. There was a wire hanger left on the roof of the car. Strangely, there was no bloody footprints found anywhere.

It could not be determined for certain where the bleeding had started or if Joan had left on her own accord. Or perhaps she was made to get into a waiting car and was taken away, given that the blood trail ended there. There was not enough evidence to point in any one direction. A chemist was able to find that the blood in the home matched Joan’s blood type and that the amount of blood found wasn’t enough to be life-threatening.

Bizarre Sightings

Police went door to door asking neighbors if they had seen Joan and some reported that they had. One neighbor claimed to have seen a woman fitting her description walking along Rt. 2A west, about 200 yards beyond Old Bedford Rd where her house was, heading towards Concord with a handkerchief around her head, tied at the chin. She was walking aimlessly, hunched over like she was cold and had an untidy appearance. This sighting was at 2:45 that afternoon.

Between 3:15 and 3:30, a similar woman was seen walking north on Rt 128 on the median strip in Waltham. Reportedly she had blood running down her legs and looked disoriented as she walked, cradling something to her stomach. Yet another sighting around 4:30 of a woman walking south on Rt 128 near Trapelo Rd. The witness stated that the front and back of her legs were covered in a dark substance they thought was mud and she was walking with her head pitched forward and both hands in the pockets of her coat. With all these sightings around Route 128, it is important to note, that this road was under construction at the time.

A couple of neighbors reported seeing a blue two-tone car in the area at the time, one witness saying that it was parked alongside Sunnyside Road at 2:45 that day. The milkman said that he had seen a car with a similar description five days before in the Risch’s driveway. One person claimed to have seen a man get out of the car, cut a couple of branches from a bush and put them into the car.

In the days after Joan’s disappearance, a local newspaper reporter made a bizarre discovery at the town’s library. A month before she disappeared, Joan had checked out the book Into Thin Air, which was about a woman who leaves behind blood smears and a towel when she goes missing. A group of library volunteers found Joan’s signature on library cards showing that she had borrowed 25 books from the library that year. A good deal of them had to do with murders and missing person cases. Based on this evidence, the reporter came up with the theory that Joan had staged a crime scene, then voluntarily disappeared.

There are virtually no suspects in Joan’s disappearance. Alibis for Martin Risch, the mailman, and the milkman have proven that none of these men had anything to do with Mrs. Risch’s disappearance. There was one other strange man that neighbors had their suspicions about: Robert Foster. Foster worked for the National Park Service and was going door to door talking to residents about a project that was being done to keep the town’s historical appearance. Some women felt that Foster had overstayed his welcome in their home, making them uncomfortable. Records indicated that Foster had visited the Risch home on September 25, a month before Joan’s disappearance. Ultimately, Foster’s alibi also checked out. His supervisor stated that Foster went out to lunch with him around 1 pm, then at 3 pm Foster left to meet with a property appraiser.

Rewards were offered for information in the disappearance of Joan Risch from the police, the town of Lincoln, and a Boston newspaper. No new leads ever came after the initial investigation.

Risch Family After the Disappearance

Martin Risch continued to live in the same house raising David and Lillian until 1975 when the National Park Service bought the home and moved it to Lexington. Risch bought another house in the same area instead of staying in the original home, now in Lexington. The part of Old Bedford Road where the house once stood is still there, but closed to vehicular traffic. Martin Risch never had his wife legally declared dead and didn’t often talk about his missing wife. On one occasion when he did, he said he believed she was still alive, but had suffered from amnesia or a mental break and couldn’t find her way back home. This seemed unlikely because Joan had no history of mental illness. Martin Risch died in 2009, never knowing what happened to his wife.

Interestingly, a man named David Risch, who appears to be Joan’s son went missing in 2017. The 58 year-old man suffered from memory impairment and disappeared from a nursing home. He was found the following week after telling police he was homeless and giving a false name and date of birth. You can read more about his story here.

Theories

Do you think Joan disappeared voluntarily? Some people think this may be the case. They believe she may have not been happy leaving her job and becoming a housewife. People who knew her argue that she was perfectly content with her life as a stay-at-home mom. The evidence of the books that she had borrowed from the library may support this theory, or maybe she was just a fan of murder/mystery novels.

Do you think she was attacked and kidnapped, never to be seen again? The witness statements about the two-tone blue car seen in the area may support this theory. Also the overturned table and the phone ripped off the wall in the kitchen could mean a struggle occurred. The blood trail ending in the driveway may make it seem that she was put into another car and taken away.

Some believe that she may have come to an accidental end. They theorize that she may have fallen into a pit at a construction site along Route 128 that she couldn’t get out of and was unknowingly buried as construction of the road continued.

The following theories are mainly rumors, but worth mentioning. Some say that Joan may have been having an affair with the man in the two-tone blue car. Maybe Joan wanted to end the affair, angering the other man enough to kill her. Maybe she got pregnant by this other man and tried to perform an at-home abortion that went wrong. The witness who claimed to see a woman walking down the road with blood running down her legs supports this theory. The wire clothes hanger found on the roof of Joan’s car could lend more strength to this suggestion.

So many theories and rumors, but not enough solid evidence to support any particular one. Joan Risch’s case is still open and if you have any information, you can contact Lincoln Police Department at 781-259-8111.

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The Unsolved Disappearance of Lillian Richey

The Disappearance of Jean Spangler