October 30, 2024 • 48 mins
On today’s episode, a concluding part of a two-parter, Paul and Kate return to 1961 Lincoln, Massachusetts where a stay-at-home mother has disappeared. Digging into the investigation and the blood evidence from the crime scene, our hosts try to piece together what really occurred.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
True crimes, and I weigh in using modern forensic techniques
to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hey, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm doing well, except I've been sort of tortured by
this story that we've been talking about so much, about
Joan Rish outside of Boston in nineteen sixty one, who's
gone missing. I've been thinking about it, actually a lot,
just because she is like so many women who I
know now, who was just at home trying to take
care of her kids, and then all that's left is
(01:26):
her blood, and so I've been really thinking about, gosh,
what could have happened to this woman? Have you been
thinking about this case?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, you know, of course I'm thinking about the case.
I pulled up the crime scene imagery. I've got some
more thoughts, you know, about the case. But you kind
of left me in a lurch with some blood being found,
and I believe it was the master bedroom as well
as a trail out to her car, So I kind
of want to know more about that, okay.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
And then we still haven't even talked about Jones' background
and if any of this could be connected to her life.
So just is a really really fast recap. October twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty one. We're in Lincoln, Massachusetts, which is a
nice suburb of Boston. She's a thirty year old homemaker
who just goes missing, and all that's left is this
bloody scene, very confusing scene, I think in the kitchen
(02:16):
with the phone pulled out and it looks like there's
been some violence. She's missing. She has a husband who's
out of town, Martin, and then she has a four
year old daughter, Lillian, and a two year old son, David,
who David sounds like was in the crib the whole time.
You had mentioned in the last episode seeing I think
they labeled maybe some underwear and some overalls that clearly
(02:39):
was David. He must have just been in his diaper
and nothing else. Up in the crib, he's crying. The
neighbor doesn't know what's going on. The police come and
they start, of course investigating, and I think it just
must have been daunting to them to see all of
the blood that was happening in the kitchen. And then
(03:00):
they want to investigate, of course the rest of the house,
which is where I sort of left you dangling here.
So what they find with the rest of the house
is there are drops of blood upstairs, just drops in
Joan and Martin's bedroom there are only about I'm going
to get specific here, eight drops which range in size
(03:22):
from one eighth of an inch to a quarter of
an inch. And there are also two drops of blood
in the homes upstairs, whole way at the top of
the staircase, which are about one eighth of an inch
in size. Lots of blood in the kitchen, I mean
from my point of view, and then some ten drops
maybe upstairs. What does that mean.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, it's very nebulous just off the bat, but when
you start talking about dripped blood, that tends to suggest
that you have an injury. Let's say you've got a
cut finger or a bloody nose, and you just have
blood that is dropping from the injury onto the floor.
If you have an individual with that type of injury,
(04:05):
the drips indicate the movement. But right now, absent any
more information, I can't say if that movement is going
to the bedroom. I can't say that it's coming out
of the bedroom. It just indicates movement by somebody who
has a bleeding injury. Or if you happen to have
(04:25):
a weapon with a lot of blood, there's blood dripping
off that weapon, but that tends to slow down rapidly
versus having an actual injury where you have a constant
flow of blood. But it indicates that the person who
has that injury is mobile, is conscious, is able to
move through the house. But I don't know anything. I
can't extrapolate anything more than that. Right now, here.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Comes some more interesting details. You've got that blood upstairs,
and then the police find what they consider to be
a trail of blood that starts from the kitchen and
goes outside toward Jones car. Joan has a nineteen fifty
one Chevy Sedan. It is about twenty feet from the house.
(05:12):
No one's been in her car. They don't find anything
out of the ordinary, but this is what they say.
There is more blood outside. It's not a huge concentration
of blood, but it starts in the kitchen and then
abruptly stops in the driveway, very close to her car,
which is in the driveway. And they said the blood
(05:32):
stains outside, though, are very small. Two are found just
outside the home side entrance on the cement walkway, and
four separate stains are found on Jones's car. One of
these is two inches long and on the center of
her trunk. There's also two one inch stains on the
car's right rear fender. Then there's a one inch stain
(05:56):
on the left side of the car's hood. So is
this Joan or is this the offender who got hurt
in this process?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Can't tell without actually doing some typing on those stains.
You know, I'm looking at the photo that you provided
last week of Joan's car parked in the driveway, and
it's not parked up by the garage. It's you know,
appears that there's a good maybe thirty feet from the
front of Joan's car to the garage itself. Of the house,
(06:28):
so it's kind of parked on the driveway away from
the house. Can't see the blood stains that you are
describing on the vehicle, but it's you know, its hood
is facing the house, and then the trunk is probably
facing the street. So these are significant stains. And one
of the observations that I had made from the kitchen
(06:52):
is there is also blood drops within the kitchen in
addition to the blood pool the smears, the contact transfers.
You know, this could be Joan, it could be the
offender who got injured in an interaction with Joan. Right now,
there isn't enough information to be able to say one
way or another unless we type those stains and figure
(07:14):
out is it Joan, and then is she conscious and
she's moving around, or do we have a herd offender
that's moving around or somebody that is transporting Joan. You know,
I've seen this where somebody is killed inside a house
and then as they're moved, they leave a dripped pattern
from their body from their injuries, and then that drip
(07:36):
pattern all of a sudden stops on the driveway when
they are placed into a vehicle. So that's one of
the things I'm assessing is could Joan have been killed
inside this house and carried out of the house and
she's dripping and then ultimately she's placed in a vehicle, Yeah,
or somehow she's you know, wrapped up and is no
(07:56):
longer free to drip. Don't know right now.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Okay, so now we aren't sure with these little bits
of blood, do you have any has your theory developed
at all at this point? I know we don't have
a ton of information, but you know, there's some other
weird things that happen, and there's lots of speculation based
on Joan's background. But you know, I'm just wondering what
you think at this point.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Right now, I can't draw a conclusion as to what's
happening with the blood. The dripped blood trails inside the
house from the bedroom or or outside. And looking at
this crime scene, with the various types of blood patterns,
where the blood patterns are located at the smears, contact
transfers some of the dripped blood, this does not look
(08:39):
like a stage crime scene to me at all. This
looks like a legitimate crime scene. Stage crime scenes are
usually very obvious. Joan is bleeding significantly inside this house,
she's on the floor. There are blows to pooled blood sources.
There is movement with you know, the contact transfer that's
(08:59):
you know, two feet up on the wall, as well
as you know, a place where likely ahead would be
laying in the corner. I mean, all of this is
entirely consistent with acts of violence being inflicted on Joan
inside this kitchen. I know there's thoughts that maybe Joan
is staging her own death and wandering away, and this
(09:21):
is where, okay, the victimology does come into play, but
the physical aspects of this crime scene just look too
authentic to my eye, you know, And I think I
have some authority to be able to say that to go,
you know what, Joan got hurt inside this kitchen. Now,
could she have survived and wandered away, sure, But would
(09:41):
Joan have left David or two year old in the
crib unattended? You know what is what is Joan's victimology like?
So that's where I think it's the next step. It
would just take a lot, and I'm sure you're going
to have some zinger for me down the road, but
right now, it would take a lot for me to
change my opinion about this crime scene.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Okay, let's talk about weird stuff. They find a coat
hanger on top of her car. There's no blood inside
the car. There's no indication that anybody tried to get
in the vehicle around the time when Joan went missing.
So the coat hanger will eventually lead to the thought
of a botched abortion. The coat hanger, to me, was
(10:25):
more like somebody trying to get into the car to
take the car, but her keys are in her purse,
which is in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well, I'm going to give you a third possibility. I
think it's possible that the offender has some obvious bloodstains
on him or his clothing. And I'm using the term
heat kind of generically in this sense, because don't know,
and grabbed some item. Let's say it's a male offender
grabs something of Martin's out of the closet, and he
(10:52):
puts that item of clothing on to cover up the
obvious stains. This is why there could be a dripped
blood trail going up to the master bedroom in order
to be able to access the adult male's clothing. And
then as this person is leaving, they just leave the
coat hanger on the car.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
This is a possibility, So we think there is definitely
a possibility that the offender injured himself and these are
his blood drops.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Where is Joan Pullets between two pm and three, let's
say conservatively three point thirty in the afternoon, There's an
hour and a half window in the middle of the
day with a neighbor right across the street. Who does
this and where did they take this woman? If that's
what happened, in what car?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Where? That is a big mystery. Now. I haven't had
a chance to see the layout of this house, the neighborhood.
What kind of searching did they do? You know? Because
you have been pulled out into the backyard and hidden,
and then the offender comes back later and grabs her
body and then really disposes of it. There's so many
(12:00):
variables there. I'm not ruling out the possibility of Joan
walking away from this, but I'm skeptical.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Of that right now, Why don't you go back to
your photo document because I didn't really give you a
chance to look at Exhibits two and three, which are
her car and that might in the house, and that
might give you a little bit of an indication of
what we're working with. It's not secluded, but it's not
as it's not my house, which is right on the streets.
(12:29):
I mean, it looks like you could be a little
sneaky if you look at those two photos.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yes, you know, and that was somewhat of the impression
I got as I scrolled through quickly last week. But
to describe for our listeners, I'm looking at a photo
of the house that's taken from the driveway. This house
is set back from the street. I can't even see
where the street is. I can see Jon's car parked
in the driveway facing the house, and the photo is
(12:56):
taken from the dry you know, behind the driver's side
trunk of the car. However, there are large trees that
appear to be surrounding much of Jones's house. It appears
that there would be limited visibility at various spots along
the street or in the neighborhood of jones house. And
you know, with the distance away from the neighbors that
(13:18):
is a parent in this photograph. You know, this is
also where even if you had let's say, an audible scream,
if Jone's being attacked in that kitchen, would anybody have
heard it? This is not your typical kind of cookie
cutter neighborhood that you see in modern California, where you're
literally two feet away from your neighbor's house with a
fence in between. This looks more countryside, not quite farm,
(13:42):
but at least it kind of has spacing, like you
know what you see in some of these farming neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Definitely a lot more space than what we're used to.
In both of these photos, we don't even see another
house near it in both of the photos. This doesn't
look like a massive house, but it's two story. It
looks like it maybe has an attic. But speaking of screams,
let's go ahead and start talking about what witnesses say
or ear witnesses say. We've kind of gone through all
(14:12):
the forensics. I mean, our first entire first episode was
all forensics, very little set up. It was very quick.
We didn't know a lot about it. We haven't talked
about her, we haven't talked about any dynamics. But we
still have some investigative stuff that we have to deal with.
So I told you there's no evidence inside inside Joan's car,
So if somebody were trying to get into her car,
(14:34):
they didn't do it. They weren't able to get in,
but there's blood on the outside. There's this hangar, which
you know, I like your suggestion. Barbara Barker, who is
the neighbor at the center of this, who's in the
mother of Douglas and Lilliam, was at her house and
she walked her over. She said, somewhere around two ten pm.
(14:54):
So the last time we saw Joan was one fifty five.
So fifteen minutes later, after Joan left Lilian at the
neighbor's house, she heard Joan yell from across the street
at her house. She said, I thought this was a
good description. She said. It was a shouting type of noise,
not screaming or someone in anguish like she was mad
(15:17):
or trying to force somebody to do something. That's what
they heard. So there is a group of women playing bridge.
Who is a neighbor at the home of a neighbor
who's also you know, lives close by to Joan. They
also around that time heard what sounded like a woman yelling,
and the women talked with one another and one or
(15:37):
two said it sounded almost like a cat, But again
it wasn't a scream or somebody in pain. Then one
more thing. Barbara says that she saw Joan wearing a
tan trench coat in the driveway around two fifteen to
two twenty. She was running past her car toward the
street and appeared to be chasing something red, So not caring,
(15:59):
but chasing. I don't know if it was a ball
or what that was. So Barbara said she thought at
first that David was dressed in a coat and took
off running and Joan went after him. But there was,
you know, no obvious red clothing, toddler clothing anywhere around,
and David was dressed in a diaper at that point.
(16:21):
So the coat that Barbara sees Joan wearing is later
found hanging up in a closet in the house. But
there's a gray coat that's missing that Joan had also worn.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
A lot.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I mean, I don't understand what's happening with this scene.
There are people who are hearing screams. And then Barbara
says she saw Joan chasing something at two fifteen.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, that's tough, it is. That's also you know, trying
to you know, assess the veracity of Barbara's vision as
to what she could have seen from where she saw it.
She obviously knows Joan, she'd recognized Joan. Doesn't sound like
she was paying a lot of attention to this action.
She just looks up and sees us, you know, kind
of this flash and probably goes back to her normal
(17:03):
routine whatever she was doing. But this missing gray coat
that kind of matches up with the coat hanger on
top of the car. You know, there's no photos of
that coat hanger. Was this coat hanger a metal coat
hanger that was bent in a way in order to
try to you know, fish out the lock of the car,
or was just this hangar that was in its normal
(17:24):
configuration and set on top of the car. I don't
have that information. However, if there is this observation of
this missing gray coat, that strengthens my thought that somebody
put an item of clothing on in order to either
disguise themselves or to hide the bloody evidence that may
(17:44):
be on their person.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, the impression I get about the hangar is, you know,
the note I have is that even though it's weird
that the hanger is laying on top of the car,
it's not bent in a way. It's as if somebody
had just taken off a coat like you're saying, and
laid the hanger on top of the car. Nobody saw
her do that, But that's sort of one of the
many weird things that now we have to talk about
(18:07):
where people have seen things. Several of the neighbors are
home when Joan vanishes in this time again, that's like,
it's so confusing to me. If you are going to
try to take this woman or hurt her or assault her, whatever,
you're trying to murder her, this is the wrong time
to do it. I mean, on the one hand, I
guess you know, the husband's probably not at home, but
all these women are home. And it's said that between
(18:30):
two twenty when Barbara saw her in the driveway wearing
this trench coat and three forty five when Lillian returns home,
no one reports seeing or hearing anything out of the
ordinary other than what we talked about the yells, and
those all happened about two fifteen or so, and that
was it as far as people being able to say,
(18:51):
this is what happened at that house. Barbara says she
was chasing something red. We can't find anything red. With David.
That's all very confused, and I know what you're saying
is is, we don't know what Barbara really saw, but
we do know she would have recognized Joan.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
But could she be mistaken? You know that part of
everything seems to be happening. You have two different ear
witnesses hearing a woman either shout or scream. Is that what.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
The Yes, it was like it was a yell.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yell. Okay, that's a good term. Okay, so a yell.
And then around the same timeframe, you have Barbara seeing
let's say an adult running after something outside right now,
could that have been Joan? You know, that's where it
would come down to the interview of Barbara. You know,
exactly how did you recognize that this was Joan? Or
did she just make an assumption it was Joan? These
(19:43):
kind of dynamic witness observations often get skewed, you know,
in your own bias kind of comes into play.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You're filling in the blanks, right your brain is filling
in the.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Blanks absolutely, So I'm I'm questioning what Barbara truly saw
and the fact that we have these other ear witnesses
around the same time hearing this woman yell. It's like, okay,
everything is happening at two fifteen. Something is going on there,
and this sounds almost like Joan is inside the house.
(20:14):
And then notice as somebody who shouldn't be in there.
Now you got the get out type of you know,
yell if you will, kind of this angry scenario. Yeah,
I don't know right now. Obviously we have the issue
of the missing body again. I go back to how
authentic this crime scene looks as if Joan had been
attacked inside this crime scene, and then you have enough
(20:37):
fender moving around and somehow, some way getting Joan's body
out in a way without anybody seeing that.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Well, we did some checking. Maren looked into it very quickly.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
For me.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Reports were that Joan was a Typo and all the
blood was typo. So I know that doesn't mean anything.
Our fender could be typo also, but at least it's consistent.
It is possible that all of this is only Jones
and that's it, which is part of Paul the reason
why this feeds into a very popular theory that this
is gone girl, that she faked it to get out
(21:11):
of this sort of you know, stagnant housewife lifestyle. And
you said yourself, there's not a lot of blood, there's
not as much as you know, I thought there was.
So what do you think about that theory.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
When I say there's not a lot of blood, as
I explained in the first episode. You know, I've seen
many murder scenes, many homicide scenes, and you can have
a significant amount more blood in these types of cases. However,
there is enough blood and the types of patterns of
blood that I said I would be investigating this as
(21:43):
a homicide. It is significant enough. And the fact that
you have different types of blood patterns a stage crime scene.
I just do not see Joan throwing herself up against
the wall, seeing her punching into a bloody pool, you know,
being drug along on the floor out of that corner,
and then you know, laying on the floor for enough
period of time to form the blood pool and the
(22:03):
blood smears, and then then wandering around. You know, with
the direct blood, this is looking pretty legit to my
my eyes. I don't want because again, I know you're
going to probably throw a surprise at me. But right now,
it's just like the typo. Everything's typo means zero. You know,
they can't say anything about who's contributing that blood outside
(22:28):
of it's you know, they all have the same blood type,
and that's fifty percent of the population.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Well, let's talk about some weird stuff. Three different drivers
report seeing a bloody days woman walking along two different
highways in Massachusetts on the day that Joan goes missing.
This is walkable from her house. No one jerks, no
one stops to help her. We don't know if this
(22:54):
is Joan. We don't know if it's separate women. I
cannot imagine it's separate women. It must be the same person.
But they said that one of these sightings takes place
at about two forty five a long Route two A,
which is only three hundred yards from the house. The
other two sidings are around three point fifteen and are
about five miles from the house on Route one twenty eight.
(23:18):
That would be a massive coincidence, would it not?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
That seems like it. I mean, do the uh three
witnesses I'll give the same description of the woman, yep.
And how do they describe the woman?
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Just?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I mean, the only details I have here days I
showed you the photo in there of her. She's beautiful,
she's very attractive. But I think everybody was driving so
fast they just noticed her demeanor, which was out of it,
completely out of it. But it sounds like the physical
descriptions had matched. So what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
You know, if she's looking that bloody in that dazed,
she's not doing this to herself. This is more like
she escaped and now she is just completely mentally not
she doesn't have her wits about her and she's wandering.
Now do you have a scenario where she just wanders
(24:05):
off the road and ends up dying somewhere, you know,
being exposed whatever it is, and just has never been found.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I have more information that is equally, if not more confusing. Okay,
So now we are deep into the investigation and they
are canvassing and talking to more neighbors. And I don't
know if Barbara picked up on this or not, but
a handful of people, including neighbors and the milkman, who
I think is probably the best source, see a car
(24:36):
they had never seen before. It's a bluish gray Oldsmobile
and it was parked in the driveway just a couple
of days before Jone goes missing. And it's also there
the day she goes missing, at three twenty five. She
if we think she's on the highway, is walking at
three point fifteen. This car is there at three twenty
(24:57):
five is when somebody notices it, and then the car
leaves the driveway fifteen minutes later around three point forty,
when she is already on the highway. It is a
stolen car. They trace it back to a guy who
was not involved at all. It had been stolen and
he had reported it stolen in Medford. We have no
idea who has that car. Martin didn't know anything about it,
(25:18):
and nobody knew anything about it. It was a mystery car.
No one knew if it was a guy driving, or
what happened with it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Well, I think that that probably argues against this woman
that's being seen on the highway as being Joan. I
would argue that that stolen vehicle, which that kind of
amps up the suspicion of that vehicle being present Jon's
driveway is the disposal vehicle that Joan was left inside
(25:46):
the house and then somebody came back and got her.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
It's so weird. It's interesting because it's the window when
Joan is unaccounted for. But after these drivers, right after
they see her walking on the highway. I had wondered
if if she had been so badly hurt and left
and for some reason, whoever did this just I don't
know what he thought that let her leave it was
a domestic kind of thing, and then went and got
(26:10):
her after she was reported on the highway. You don't
think it's weird. I mean, how many bloody women are
out there at this time so close to her? I
don't understand. And people are very exact. I mean three
forty three twenty five. I guess people are looking at
their watches and their nosey and they want to know
what's going on. Or maybe it's the milkman who has
a very specific route. But everybody's pretty sure about the
(26:33):
timing on all of this, and I just don't understand
how this is working.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It's you know, but this is where real life, you know,
when you work cases you run across which you just assumed.
It can't be a coincidence, right, That happens all the time,
and so you know, in terms of explaining what's going
on in this case, with everything that you've told me
(26:59):
so far, I still go to my original theory, you know,
is that Joan was killed or incapacitated inside the house.
The offender is likely injured defender puts on some clothes
and then comes back with the car, scoops up Joan's
body and leaves. I do leave open the possibility that
(27:20):
Joan is so injured and dazed inside that kitchen that
she could have wandered out and is the woman that
is being seen. But neither scenario, in my mind, indicate
that this was a thought out planned You know, Joan
(27:42):
is doing this in a way to try to disappear,
It just doesn't add up that way. That to me,
is the least likely of the scenarios.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I agree, it's the sexiest, but it's the least likely.
Let me tell you a little bit about Joan. So
she she's thirty years old and she was born in Brooklyn.
Her parents both died in a house fire when she
was eight, so she was adopted by her aunt Alice
and Alice's husband, Frank. So this was pretty awful because
(28:16):
Joan told Martin, her husband, when she was older, that
Frank had abused her. So this is her adopted father
slash uncle. Joan didn't say what the abuse was, but
it was insinuated that it was sexual abuse. This is
the relative I told you who they wanted to do
the blood type on to see if his blood matched,
(28:36):
and it didn't. He was not type. Oh that doesn't
necessarily mean anything, but that is a theory that goes
out there that this is some twenty years later or whatever,
Frank coming and something came up with Joan, and Joan
was going to spill the beans on this and Frank
came and killed her. But that's why Frank was investigated,
(28:56):
and everything else is pretty standard. She meets Martin is
at Harvard Business School. She got a job with a
publishing company, and they seem to have a really nice life.
There is not much on her background. Frank does stand out, though,
her uncle, who she says was abusing her.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, worthwhile investigating. You know, when you start talking about
blood typing, I did this, you know, early on in
my career. I'd want to look at the analyst notes,
you know, and see how they did the typing. We
would grade the typing. You know, do you have because
when you're typing, you know, you have this antigen you know,
you basically are looking for this glutenation and it's where
(29:38):
you add the various blood typing components and you get
these cells that group together they kind of stick together,
and sometimes you can get them to stick together real strong,
and so it's like very obvious, Okay, this person's type A.
But sometimes a few of them stick together, and you go,
I think that's type A. How strong this segglutination is
(30:02):
and it can be a little bit iffy. So, you know,
if they eliminated this adoptive father or this uncle through
blood typing, I would say, yeah, likely he's not typo.
But I think there is still a possibility that that
blood typing done in nineteen sixty one was wrong, you know,
And if the evidence exists today, then just let's get
(30:25):
these swabs out, if they collected swabs or however they
collected these various blood stains, and just do the DNA,
and I with what I'm seeing, I think you have
a good chance that you're going to have a thunder
DNA in this crime scene.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Well, let's go down a little bit of a victimology hole.
This is I did not really believe the gone girl theory,
but that is a prevailing theory on the internet, which
tells you this is a very recent theory. Okay, you know,
the idea, of course, is that she's gone missing. How
could this happen. It's, as you had said, not enough
blood to say she's dead, and that she could have
(31:01):
walked off on her own. You know, they see this
woman whose days. So when asked, I think, well, why
would she want to do this? I think the answer is, well,
she probably wanted to run off with a lover or
escape the oppressive lifestyle of being a housewife in the
nineteen sixties, which I get, except there's no proof of
(31:21):
any of that, or that she adored her kids. She
seemed to really love Martin. They didn't seem to have
any problems. But this is what's funny. There's a big
deal made about the fact that Joan checked out twenty
five mystery books which at the library, which are talking
about murder and disappearances. But the author, Stephen Ahern, that
(31:43):
I told you about, he actually went back and did
a big review, and she had only checked out a
few of them, much smaller amount. And it doesn't really
matter anyway. I mean, I love mysteries, that doesn't mean
I'm going to gone girl myself.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I think there's a lot of boyfriends and husband very
nervous because they're seeing their wiser girlfriends reading all these
true crime books about murder, right.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah. I don't know if I would put any weight
on that whatsoever. And I you know, kudos to that author,
Steve Ahern, for actually doing the leg work and showing
you know, kind of the if you want to say,
you know, how much weight to put on that that
bit of information. I think when you start talking about
the online community, of course, there's a lot of debate
about all these various scenarios and how to assess these scenarios.
(32:31):
Part of maybe the issue is not necessarily having the
experience of going into a lot of homicide scenes and
being able to interpret what is going on in those scenes.
And I've got a fair amount of experience doing that,
well above the average person in law enforcement. And with
(32:53):
what I am seeing here and we're talking, she drops
off Lilian and Douglas back at Barbara's house at one
fifty five, and then you have the woman yell or
the female yell. You've got Barbara seeing Joan in a
coat at two fifteen. I mean, we were talking twenty
minutes and you've got all of this. If Joone's doing this,
(33:15):
she's doing you know, she's throwing herself into the wall
and cutting herself or somehow beating herself and wandering through. Yeah,
and she's doing this spontaneously. This just is not adding up.
And then of course we've got you know, the phone
that's been torn out. We've got a bloody fingerprint that
supposedly doesn't match Joan. Who is that? You know, if
(33:39):
they truly did eliminate all the possible sources of contamination,
that's an item of evidence that I put a lot
of weight on. It's her blood on the phone that's
been moved, and we have indications that you know, the
phone's been ripped off the wall. You've got the TV
stand that it was underneath where that phone was located
(34:00):
it at. You have the phone book that's been opened
up to the emergency services, and you have a bloody
fingerprint on the phone that's not Jones significant. You know.
So I really really strongly like if I were to
be looking at this case, it I would say Joan
is dead and her body was removed. That is my
(34:20):
predominant theory, and my focus today would be trying to
find a Fender DNA either inside this kitchen with those blood.
You've got isolated blood drips, I mean This would be
something that just stands out to a well versed crime
scene reconstructionist, DNA analyst. You have blood trails throughout the
house that you can't say as Joan or not Joe,
(34:41):
and you have the blood stains outside and on the car.
Those are all target items, you know, So that latent
print and DNA on some of these isolated stains, that
would be the initial thrust of my forensic investigation of
this case, and that likely would I think support theory
number one in my mind.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Okay, I wanted to throw out the idea of Martin
the husband, hiring somebody. He was thoroughly investigated. They had
no financial problems, they had all by all accounts, a
good relationship, no stress. He had really like nothing that
we can see to gain from her disappearance. There was
(35:23):
no life insurance policy, he didn't have an affair. He'd
ended up getting married, but a long time from then,
and then he died in two thousand and nine. So
my question would be who else would know when is
the right time to do this? It happens right kind
of perfectly. David's having a nap. I guess maybe when
(35:43):
he's waking up, But I guess somebody who's watching, maybe
somebody who's been stalking her, right, and then there's a
stolen vehicle. But I'm just wondering if this would ever
be a higher It just feels like it's really risky.
Somebody would really have to have either been watching her
or had been told about what is happening in her house,
(36:05):
because it does feel a little isolated. I don't know,
just thrown it out there.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
No, I think it's a very real possibility whether the
offender whoever killed, or is hired, or would just happened
to be inside this house for one reason or another.
You know, that all just adds up with what I'm seeing.
I would not discount that as a possibility. It wasn't
done very well. And the reality is is that you know,
these hitmen that get hired, there's very few true professionals
(36:33):
out there. Good to know, Yeah, you know, there are people,
for sure, And I think in my career, I've only
got one case, and it was not when I was active.
It was a case I did for a TV show,
Original investigator, you know, worked with the original investigator and
went to the crime scene and looked at everything. I'm going, yep,
This is probably a pro based on the totality of
(36:55):
everything that this killer was able to do. So most
of these hired hit men are just you know, somebody
who's willing to commit the crime and may have never
done something like this before. So that's I can't you know,
conclude anything looking at the crime scene, as are we
dealing with a hired hitman. I just think Joan was
(37:15):
confronted by somebody in that kitchen, try to get to
the phone, and then is now somehow being injured to
the point of having bleeding injuries of some type to
where you know, they can perform blood pools and contact transfers.
And then whether it's Joan or whether it's the offender,
there's dripped blood in the kitchen and throughout the house
(37:37):
ord I shouldn't say throughout, but at least up to
the master bedroom. Then why why go to the master bedroom?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I think that's what the police think too, So their
very best theory is, you know, when they talk to
Martin and he says she has no enemies, She's never
had a conflict with anybody. Everybody describes her as lovely,
very shy, very committed to her family. And he's the
same way. So they just say they land on the
(38:05):
best theory they have, which was that she was stalked
most likely and was the victim of a violent abduction,
which Martin says, I can't even believe that would happen.
But they think that when Martin was out of the
house the day that she went missing, that this was
somebody who had been watching or somehow knew. Maybe it
(38:26):
was like the milkman, not the milkman, but maybe somebody
who knew that Martin left every day. And the police
believe it would have been very easy for the attacker
to have wrapped Joan up in a great charcoal top
coat the one that's missing, and maybe with that hanger
on top of her car and carried her through the
woods onto Virginia Road, or he could have driven his
(38:50):
own car into the driveway the Oldsmobile and carried her out.
I still don't know why there would be blood marks
on the outside of her car, unless maybe she was
grabbing it and fighting and left blood before he shoved
her into the Oldsmobile, if that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
No, well, there's no photographs I can take a look
at of the blood marks on the car, but I
think the way you described him, it sounded like you
had some dripped blood or a contact transfer. This could
be just a matter of the body, you know, if
you're having it. Because this Jones car, this is a
single lane wide driveway, so Jon's car takes up the
(39:31):
width of this driveway. So if like let's say the
stolen car is the disposal car, you could see where
the offender is having to carry Joan past her car
in order to get out to the stolen car to
put her in the trunk or wherever he puts her.
It's possible you could have some you know, drips off
of Jan's body. This is what we see sometimes when
bodies are removed by the coroner's deputies or the death investigators.
(39:54):
So it's it's a form of scene contamination for us,
or it could be the offender himself. He's got still
a bleeding injury. So it's so hard to say without
looking at the photos. And there could be probably numerous
explanations for that. But I don't think I can say
anything that, oh, it must be Joan touching the outside
of her car. I don't think that that is a
(40:16):
singular conclusion that could be made with the information that
we have.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Okay, one more theory. The investigators continue kind of pressing
you with Frank the adoptive father slash. I'm just going
to say uncle who she lived with, who it sounds
like was abusing her. That's what Joan said. So I
told you the blood type didn't match. They start having
a discussion with Frank's now estranged wife, who is Jon's aunt.
(40:46):
And in the month leading up to her disappearance, Frank
had been trying to get his wife back to move
back in, and Joan had been writing letters that the
police had back and forth. This is just a month
before saying at age thirty, you don't know this, but
your husband abused me. You cannot go back to him.
(41:06):
Do not do it. They gave him polygraphs. They were inconclusive.
We know how we both feel about polygraphs. But there
wasn't the blood type and they couldn't ever charge him.
But actually seems like that to me, seems like our
best suspect rather than a random person. What do you
think was.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
He compared to the bloody print on the telephone did
not match. So, I mean, you have two forms of
physical evidence not matching him. His fingerprints and his blood type. Yeah,
I definitely put a lot more weight on the fingerprint
evidence that they excluded him as being that bloody print
(41:45):
less weight on the blood typing. I mean, obviously there's
family history that leads to Jones victimology and why you know,
maybe Frank has a motive to make her disappear, but
right now the evidence is showing that.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah. Well, letters are tricky because he could have easily
gotten a hold of those letters and read if his
wife kept them, and I'm sure she did. But you're right,
there's nothing against him, and it sounds like he had
an alibi. I mean, we know how we feel about alibis.
They could be greater, they could not be right. But
this ends up being a case that, as I said,
goes col goes unsolved. And there are i mean just
(42:23):
lots of sightings of Joan Rish throughout the years. In
nineteen sixty eight, there had been sightings as far away
as Chicago, and we're in Massachusetts when this happens. There
was one in a trailer park in Arizona. But nothing's
ever come out of any of this. So we don't
have a body, we don't have any idea what happened,
and you've got two little kids who ended up with
(42:44):
no mother.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
And I'm assuming that this was a relatively high profile
case for the area.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yes, absolutely, just an enduring mystery.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah, I will say, like with higher profile missing persons cases,
we often get dozens of, not hundreds of sidings. I've
even got a case where family had a false siding
of their missing person and it wasn't this one women's sister. Unfortunately,
their loved one was dead and had long had been
(43:13):
dead for a long time at that point. But you know,
so that's I kind of don't put any weight on
the sidings of Joan after the case. Is that her
walking days, I mean, I think it's it's a remote possibility,
though I want to eliminate it. I really, I think
I agree with the authorities. Is that Joan was taken
(43:34):
out of the house, was wrapped in something, and was
placed in a car and driven away.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
A car that had been stolen.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
So yeah, well that's kind of a clue.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah, what a sad case. I mean, this is just
a woman living her life. We don't know what happened,
but we know that she was doing exactly what her
family said she always did. Taking care of her kids, Yeah,
watching over them, being a good mom, taking them to appointments,
doing everything. This is a nice house, doing everything that
she was supposed to be doing, a great wife, according
(44:05):
to Martin, and just in a flash, there's nothing to
even bury of this woman, and that is so sad
to me.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah, and for the family, that often is one of
the most difficult things because they don't have that answer.
I've talked to family members of homicide victims and let's
say they've had a loved one and go missing. That's
tortuous because they don't know what has happened. And then
once they get the answer that the loved what has
been found and had been killed. As horrible as that
(44:37):
is for them, it's at least an answer.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, I agree. Well, boy, this was a tough case.
I think I just relate to this woman a lot.
I'm so family oriented. I know you are too, and
I just really felt for her family and felt for
her whatever happened. Whatever happened was obviously very physically painful.
I hope whatever else happened after that was very swift,
because this was is not a good ending for her.
(45:02):
This is why I don't like unsolved cases. I need
a conclusion. I mean, I am not delusional enough to
think that she's in Cobbo right now hanging out. But
I like to know what happened, and I like to,
dang it, know that there's a bad guy that's been caught.
And we don't have either one of those in this case.
But I do like to throw you a cold case
bone every once in a while, because I know you
like him so much.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
There's meat on the bone in this case. In terms
of us, like if I were to open this up
as a case and I'm looking at it, I'm actually
getting excited because I'm seeing things that I know can
be used to solve the case. And if they have
any of this evidence, and from nineteen sixty one, it's
possible every agency was different in terms of how wether
(45:47):
how well they process the crime scene from this era
to how long they stored the evidence too, if they
can even find the evidence. But if that, if this
evidence still exists with modern technology, it's a solvable case.
If I'm assessing a case today that's that's this old
you know, part of it is, okay, what what was
the lead investigating agency? If there was a Lincoln Police Department.
(46:10):
Sounds like Lincoln, and it looks like based off of
her house photo, it's probably a relatively low populated area,
you know, So it's possible that this was a local
sheriff would have taken on this case, or they reach
out to the state to do it. And that's usually
(46:30):
fairly easy to figure out what you start digging into
the case itself, and that can be well, she never
went to corner, so you don't have an autopsy report,
you know, but it's just a matter of you know,
figuring out the history and who would have had jurisdiction
over this location and going from there.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Okay, well, what a case? What a case? Next week
we are off. I deserve it. I don't know if
you deserve it, but I deserve it. Do you deserve
it a week off?
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Paul?
Speaker 1 (46:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I don't know if I just over a week off.
But I can see where you. I mean, you you
do such a great job telling the story. I don't
know how you do it. So yes, I can you
need a mental break, I do, you know, a little
dandelion break, and then we can we can hit it
hard when you come back.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
How's that got it that sounds fantastic. Okay, we'll see you.
I'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Sounds good, Kate, take care Zoo.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Its most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold Cases,
is also available now
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
True crimes, and I weigh in using modern forensic techniques
to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hey, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm doing well, except I've been sort of tortured by
this story that we've been talking about so much, about
Joan Rish outside of Boston in nineteen sixty one, who's
gone missing. I've been thinking about it, actually a lot,
just because she is like so many women who I
know now, who was just at home trying to take
care of her kids, and then all that's left is
(01:26):
her blood, and so I've been really thinking about, gosh,
what could have happened to this woman? Have you been
thinking about this case?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, you know, of course I'm thinking about the case.
I pulled up the crime scene imagery. I've got some
more thoughts, you know, about the case. But you kind
of left me in a lurch with some blood being found,
and I believe it was the master bedroom as well
as a trail out to her car, So I kind
of want to know more about that, okay.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
And then we still haven't even talked about Jones' background
and if any of this could be connected to her life.
So just is a really really fast recap. October twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty one. We're in Lincoln, Massachusetts, which is a
nice suburb of Boston. She's a thirty year old homemaker
who just goes missing, and all that's left is this
bloody scene, very confusing scene, I think in the kitchen
(02:16):
with the phone pulled out and it looks like there's
been some violence. She's missing. She has a husband who's
out of town, Martin, and then she has a four
year old daughter, Lillian, and a two year old son, David,
who David sounds like was in the crib the whole time.
You had mentioned in the last episode seeing I think
they labeled maybe some underwear and some overalls that clearly
(02:39):
was David. He must have just been in his diaper
and nothing else. Up in the crib, he's crying. The
neighbor doesn't know what's going on. The police come and
they start, of course investigating, and I think it just
must have been daunting to them to see all of
the blood that was happening in the kitchen. And then
(03:00):
they want to investigate, of course the rest of the house,
which is where I sort of left you dangling here.
So what they find with the rest of the house
is there are drops of blood upstairs, just drops in
Joan and Martin's bedroom there are only about I'm going
to get specific here, eight drops which range in size
(03:22):
from one eighth of an inch to a quarter of
an inch. And there are also two drops of blood
in the homes upstairs, whole way at the top of
the staircase, which are about one eighth of an inch
in size. Lots of blood in the kitchen, I mean
from my point of view, and then some ten drops
maybe upstairs. What does that mean.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, it's very nebulous just off the bat, but when
you start talking about dripped blood, that tends to suggest
that you have an injury. Let's say you've got a
cut finger or a bloody nose, and you just have
blood that is dropping from the injury onto the floor.
If you have an individual with that type of injury,
(04:05):
the drips indicate the movement. But right now, absent any
more information, I can't say if that movement is going
to the bedroom. I can't say that it's coming out
of the bedroom. It just indicates movement by somebody who
has a bleeding injury. Or if you happen to have
(04:25):
a weapon with a lot of blood, there's blood dripping
off that weapon, but that tends to slow down rapidly
versus having an actual injury where you have a constant
flow of blood. But it indicates that the person who
has that injury is mobile, is conscious, is able to
move through the house. But I don't know anything. I
can't extrapolate anything more than that. Right now, here.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Comes some more interesting details. You've got that blood upstairs,
and then the police find what they consider to be
a trail of blood that starts from the kitchen and
goes outside toward Jones car. Joan has a nineteen fifty
one Chevy Sedan. It is about twenty feet from the house.
(05:12):
No one's been in her car. They don't find anything
out of the ordinary, but this is what they say.
There is more blood outside. It's not a huge concentration
of blood, but it starts in the kitchen and then
abruptly stops in the driveway, very close to her car,
which is in the driveway. And they said the blood
(05:32):
stains outside, though, are very small. Two are found just
outside the home side entrance on the cement walkway, and
four separate stains are found on Jones's car. One of
these is two inches long and on the center of
her trunk. There's also two one inch stains on the
car's right rear fender. Then there's a one inch stain
(05:56):
on the left side of the car's hood. So is
this Joan or is this the offender who got hurt
in this process?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Can't tell without actually doing some typing on those stains.
You know, I'm looking at the photo that you provided
last week of Joan's car parked in the driveway, and
it's not parked up by the garage. It's you know,
appears that there's a good maybe thirty feet from the
front of Joan's car to the garage itself. Of the house,
(06:28):
so it's kind of parked on the driveway away from
the house. Can't see the blood stains that you are
describing on the vehicle, but it's you know, its hood
is facing the house, and then the trunk is probably
facing the street. So these are significant stains. And one
of the observations that I had made from the kitchen
(06:52):
is there is also blood drops within the kitchen in
addition to the blood pool the smears, the contact transfers.
You know, this could be Joan, it could be the
offender who got injured in an interaction with Joan. Right now,
there isn't enough information to be able to say one
way or another unless we type those stains and figure
(07:14):
out is it Joan, and then is she conscious and
she's moving around, or do we have a herd offender
that's moving around or somebody that is transporting Joan. You know,
I've seen this where somebody is killed inside a house
and then as they're moved, they leave a dripped pattern
from their body from their injuries, and then that drip
(07:36):
pattern all of a sudden stops on the driveway when
they are placed into a vehicle. So that's one of
the things I'm assessing is could Joan have been killed
inside this house and carried out of the house and
she's dripping and then ultimately she's placed in a vehicle, Yeah,
or somehow she's you know, wrapped up and is no
(07:56):
longer free to drip. Don't know right now.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Okay, so now we aren't sure with these little bits
of blood, do you have any has your theory developed
at all at this point? I know we don't have
a ton of information, but you know, there's some other
weird things that happen, and there's lots of speculation based
on Joan's background. But you know, I'm just wondering what
you think at this point.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Right now, I can't draw a conclusion as to what's
happening with the blood. The dripped blood trails inside the
house from the bedroom or or outside. And looking at
this crime scene, with the various types of blood patterns,
where the blood patterns are located at the smears, contact
transfers some of the dripped blood, this does not look
(08:39):
like a stage crime scene to me at all. This
looks like a legitimate crime scene. Stage crime scenes are
usually very obvious. Joan is bleeding significantly inside this house,
she's on the floor. There are blows to pooled blood sources.
There is movement with you know, the contact transfer that's
(08:59):
you know, two feet up on the wall, as well
as you know, a place where likely ahead would be
laying in the corner. I mean, all of this is
entirely consistent with acts of violence being inflicted on Joan
inside this kitchen. I know there's thoughts that maybe Joan
is staging her own death and wandering away, and this
(09:21):
is where, okay, the victimology does come into play, but
the physical aspects of this crime scene just look too
authentic to my eye, you know, And I think I
have some authority to be able to say that to go,
you know what, Joan got hurt inside this kitchen. Now,
could she have survived and wandered away, sure, But would
(09:41):
Joan have left David or two year old in the
crib unattended? You know what is what is Joan's victimology like?
So that's where I think it's the next step. It
would just take a lot, and I'm sure you're going
to have some zinger for me down the road, but
right now, it would take a lot for me to
change my opinion about this crime scene.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Okay, let's talk about weird stuff. They find a coat
hanger on top of her car. There's no blood inside
the car. There's no indication that anybody tried to get
in the vehicle around the time when Joan went missing.
So the coat hanger will eventually lead to the thought
of a botched abortion. The coat hanger, to me, was
(10:25):
more like somebody trying to get into the car to
take the car, but her keys are in her purse,
which is in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well, I'm going to give you a third possibility. I
think it's possible that the offender has some obvious bloodstains
on him or his clothing. And I'm using the term
heat kind of generically in this sense, because don't know,
and grabbed some item. Let's say it's a male offender
grabs something of Martin's out of the closet, and he
(10:52):
puts that item of clothing on to cover up the
obvious stains. This is why there could be a dripped
blood trail going up to the master bedroom in order
to be able to access the adult male's clothing. And
then as this person is leaving, they just leave the
coat hanger on the car.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
This is a possibility, So we think there is definitely
a possibility that the offender injured himself and these are
his blood drops.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Where is Joan Pullets between two pm and three, let's
say conservatively three point thirty in the afternoon, There's an
hour and a half window in the middle of the
day with a neighbor right across the street. Who does
this and where did they take this woman? If that's
what happened, in what car?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Where? That is a big mystery. Now. I haven't had
a chance to see the layout of this house, the neighborhood.
What kind of searching did they do? You know? Because
you have been pulled out into the backyard and hidden,
and then the offender comes back later and grabs her
body and then really disposes of it. There's so many
(12:00):
variables there. I'm not ruling out the possibility of Joan
walking away from this, but I'm skeptical.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Of that right now, Why don't you go back to
your photo document because I didn't really give you a
chance to look at Exhibits two and three, which are
her car and that might in the house, and that
might give you a little bit of an indication of
what we're working with. It's not secluded, but it's not
as it's not my house, which is right on the streets.
(12:29):
I mean, it looks like you could be a little
sneaky if you look at those two photos.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yes, you know, and that was somewhat of the impression
I got as I scrolled through quickly last week. But
to describe for our listeners, I'm looking at a photo
of the house that's taken from the driveway. This house
is set back from the street. I can't even see
where the street is. I can see Jon's car parked
in the driveway facing the house, and the photo is
(12:56):
taken from the dry you know, behind the driver's side
trunk of the car. However, there are large trees that
appear to be surrounding much of Jones's house. It appears
that there would be limited visibility at various spots along
the street or in the neighborhood of jones house. And
you know, with the distance away from the neighbors that
(13:18):
is a parent in this photograph. You know, this is
also where even if you had let's say, an audible scream,
if Jone's being attacked in that kitchen, would anybody have
heard it? This is not your typical kind of cookie
cutter neighborhood that you see in modern California, where you're
literally two feet away from your neighbor's house with a
fence in between. This looks more countryside, not quite farm,
(13:42):
but at least it kind of has spacing, like you
know what you see in some of these farming neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Definitely a lot more space than what we're used to.
In both of these photos, we don't even see another
house near it in both of the photos. This doesn't
look like a massive house, but it's two story. It
looks like it maybe has an attic. But speaking of screams,
let's go ahead and start talking about what witnesses say
or ear witnesses say. We've kind of gone through all
(14:12):
the forensics. I mean, our first entire first episode was
all forensics, very little set up. It was very quick.
We didn't know a lot about it. We haven't talked
about her, we haven't talked about any dynamics. But we
still have some investigative stuff that we have to deal with.
So I told you there's no evidence inside inside Joan's car,
So if somebody were trying to get into her car,
(14:34):
they didn't do it. They weren't able to get in,
but there's blood on the outside. There's this hangar, which
you know, I like your suggestion. Barbara Barker, who is
the neighbor at the center of this, who's in the
mother of Douglas and Lilliam, was at her house and
she walked her over. She said, somewhere around two ten pm.
(14:54):
So the last time we saw Joan was one fifty five.
So fifteen minutes later, after Joan left Lilian at the
neighbor's house, she heard Joan yell from across the street
at her house. She said, I thought this was a
good description. She said. It was a shouting type of noise,
not screaming or someone in anguish like she was mad
(15:17):
or trying to force somebody to do something. That's what
they heard. So there is a group of women playing bridge.
Who is a neighbor at the home of a neighbor
who's also you know, lives close by to Joan. They
also around that time heard what sounded like a woman yelling,
and the women talked with one another and one or
(15:37):
two said it sounded almost like a cat, But again
it wasn't a scream or somebody in pain. Then one
more thing. Barbara says that she saw Joan wearing a
tan trench coat in the driveway around two fifteen to
two twenty. She was running past her car toward the
street and appeared to be chasing something red, So not caring,
(15:59):
but chasing. I don't know if it was a ball
or what that was. So Barbara said she thought at
first that David was dressed in a coat and took
off running and Joan went after him. But there was,
you know, no obvious red clothing, toddler clothing anywhere around,
and David was dressed in a diaper at that point.
(16:21):
So the coat that Barbara sees Joan wearing is later
found hanging up in a closet in the house. But
there's a gray coat that's missing that Joan had also worn.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
A lot.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I mean, I don't understand what's happening with this scene.
There are people who are hearing screams. And then Barbara
says she saw Joan chasing something at two fifteen.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, that's tough, it is. That's also you know, trying
to you know, assess the veracity of Barbara's vision as
to what she could have seen from where she saw it.
She obviously knows Joan, she'd recognized Joan. Doesn't sound like
she was paying a lot of attention to this action.
She just looks up and sees us, you know, kind
of this flash and probably goes back to her normal
(17:03):
routine whatever she was doing. But this missing gray coat
that kind of matches up with the coat hanger on
top of the car. You know, there's no photos of
that coat hanger. Was this coat hanger a metal coat
hanger that was bent in a way in order to
try to you know, fish out the lock of the car,
or was just this hangar that was in its normal
(17:24):
configuration and set on top of the car. I don't
have that information. However, if there is this observation of
this missing gray coat, that strengthens my thought that somebody
put an item of clothing on in order to either
disguise themselves or to hide the bloody evidence that may
(17:44):
be on their person.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, the impression I get about the hangar is, you know,
the note I have is that even though it's weird
that the hanger is laying on top of the car,
it's not bent in a way. It's as if somebody
had just taken off a coat like you're saying, and
laid the hanger on top of the car. Nobody saw
her do that, But that's sort of one of the
many weird things that now we have to talk about
(18:07):
where people have seen things. Several of the neighbors are
home when Joan vanishes in this time again, that's like,
it's so confusing to me. If you are going to
try to take this woman or hurt her or assault her, whatever,
you're trying to murder her, this is the wrong time
to do it. I mean, on the one hand, I
guess you know, the husband's probably not at home, but
all these women are home. And it's said that between
(18:30):
two twenty when Barbara saw her in the driveway wearing
this trench coat and three forty five when Lillian returns home,
no one reports seeing or hearing anything out of the
ordinary other than what we talked about the yells, and
those all happened about two fifteen or so, and that
was it as far as people being able to say,
(18:51):
this is what happened at that house. Barbara says she
was chasing something red. We can't find anything red. With David.
That's all very confused, and I know what you're saying
is is, we don't know what Barbara really saw, but
we do know she would have recognized Joan.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
But could she be mistaken? You know that part of
everything seems to be happening. You have two different ear
witnesses hearing a woman either shout or scream. Is that what.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
The Yes, it was like it was a yell.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yell. Okay, that's a good term. Okay, so a yell.
And then around the same timeframe, you have Barbara seeing
let's say an adult running after something outside right now,
could that have been Joan? You know, that's where it
would come down to the interview of Barbara. You know,
exactly how did you recognize that this was Joan? Or
did she just make an assumption it was Joan? These
(19:43):
kind of dynamic witness observations often get skewed, you know,
in your own bias kind of comes into play.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You're filling in the blanks, right your brain is filling
in the.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Blanks absolutely, So I'm I'm questioning what Barbara truly saw
and the fact that we have these other ear witnesses
around the same time hearing this woman yell. It's like, okay,
everything is happening at two fifteen. Something is going on there,
and this sounds almost like Joan is inside the house.
(20:14):
And then notice as somebody who shouldn't be in there.
Now you got the get out type of you know,
yell if you will, kind of this angry scenario. Yeah,
I don't know right now. Obviously we have the issue
of the missing body again. I go back to how
authentic this crime scene looks as if Joan had been
attacked inside this crime scene, and then you have enough
(20:37):
fender moving around and somehow, some way getting Joan's body
out in a way without anybody seeing that.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Well, we did some checking. Maren looked into it very quickly.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
For me.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Reports were that Joan was a Typo and all the
blood was typo. So I know that doesn't mean anything.
Our fender could be typo also, but at least it's consistent.
It is possible that all of this is only Jones
and that's it, which is part of Paul the reason
why this feeds into a very popular theory that this
is gone girl, that she faked it to get out
(21:11):
of this sort of you know, stagnant housewife lifestyle. And
you said yourself, there's not a lot of blood, there's
not as much as you know, I thought there was.
So what do you think about that theory.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
When I say there's not a lot of blood, as
I explained in the first episode. You know, I've seen
many murder scenes, many homicide scenes, and you can have
a significant amount more blood in these types of cases. However,
there is enough blood and the types of patterns of
blood that I said I would be investigating this as
(21:43):
a homicide. It is significant enough. And the fact that
you have different types of blood patterns a stage crime scene.
I just do not see Joan throwing herself up against
the wall, seeing her punching into a bloody pool, you know,
being drug along on the floor out of that corner,
and then you know, laying on the floor for enough
period of time to form the blood pool and the
(22:03):
blood smears, and then then wandering around. You know, with
the direct blood, this is looking pretty legit to my
my eyes. I don't want because again, I know you're
going to probably throw a surprise at me. But right now,
it's just like the typo. Everything's typo means zero. You know,
they can't say anything about who's contributing that blood outside
(22:28):
of it's you know, they all have the same blood type,
and that's fifty percent of the population.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Well, let's talk about some weird stuff. Three different drivers
report seeing a bloody days woman walking along two different
highways in Massachusetts on the day that Joan goes missing.
This is walkable from her house. No one jerks, no
one stops to help her. We don't know if this
(22:54):
is Joan. We don't know if it's separate women. I
cannot imagine it's separate women. It must be the same person.
But they said that one of these sightings takes place
at about two forty five a long Route two A,
which is only three hundred yards from the house. The
other two sidings are around three point fifteen and are
about five miles from the house on Route one twenty eight.
(23:18):
That would be a massive coincidence, would it not?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
That seems like it. I mean, do the uh three
witnesses I'll give the same description of the woman, yep.
And how do they describe the woman?
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Just?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I mean, the only details I have here days I
showed you the photo in there of her. She's beautiful,
she's very attractive. But I think everybody was driving so
fast they just noticed her demeanor, which was out of it,
completely out of it. But it sounds like the physical
descriptions had matched. So what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
You know, if she's looking that bloody in that dazed,
she's not doing this to herself. This is more like
she escaped and now she is just completely mentally not
she doesn't have her wits about her and she's wandering.
Now do you have a scenario where she just wanders
(24:05):
off the road and ends up dying somewhere, you know,
being exposed whatever it is, and just has never been found.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I have more information that is equally, if not more confusing. Okay,
So now we are deep into the investigation and they
are canvassing and talking to more neighbors. And I don't
know if Barbara picked up on this or not, but
a handful of people, including neighbors and the milkman, who
I think is probably the best source, see a car
(24:36):
they had never seen before. It's a bluish gray Oldsmobile
and it was parked in the driveway just a couple
of days before Jone goes missing. And it's also there
the day she goes missing, at three twenty five. She
if we think she's on the highway, is walking at
three point fifteen. This car is there at three twenty
(24:57):
five is when somebody notices it, and then the car
leaves the driveway fifteen minutes later around three point forty,
when she is already on the highway. It is a
stolen car. They trace it back to a guy who
was not involved at all. It had been stolen and
he had reported it stolen in Medford. We have no
idea who has that car. Martin didn't know anything about it,
(25:18):
and nobody knew anything about it. It was a mystery car.
No one knew if it was a guy driving, or
what happened with it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Well, I think that that probably argues against this woman
that's being seen on the highway as being Joan. I
would argue that that stolen vehicle, which that kind of
amps up the suspicion of that vehicle being present Jon's
driveway is the disposal vehicle that Joan was left inside
(25:46):
the house and then somebody came back and got her.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
It's so weird. It's interesting because it's the window when
Joan is unaccounted for. But after these drivers, right after
they see her walking on the highway. I had wondered
if if she had been so badly hurt and left
and for some reason, whoever did this just I don't
know what he thought that let her leave it was
a domestic kind of thing, and then went and got
(26:10):
her after she was reported on the highway. You don't
think it's weird. I mean, how many bloody women are
out there at this time so close to her? I
don't understand. And people are very exact. I mean three
forty three twenty five. I guess people are looking at
their watches and their nosey and they want to know
what's going on. Or maybe it's the milkman who has
a very specific route. But everybody's pretty sure about the
(26:33):
timing on all of this, and I just don't understand
how this is working.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It's you know, but this is where real life, you know,
when you work cases you run across which you just assumed.
It can't be a coincidence, right, That happens all the time,
and so you know, in terms of explaining what's going
on in this case, with everything that you've told me
(26:59):
so far, I still go to my original theory, you know,
is that Joan was killed or incapacitated inside the house.
The offender is likely injured defender puts on some clothes
and then comes back with the car, scoops up Joan's
body and leaves. I do leave open the possibility that
(27:20):
Joan is so injured and dazed inside that kitchen that
she could have wandered out and is the woman that
is being seen. But neither scenario, in my mind, indicate
that this was a thought out planned You know, Joan
(27:42):
is doing this in a way to try to disappear,
It just doesn't add up that way. That to me,
is the least likely of the scenarios.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I agree, it's the sexiest, but it's the least likely.
Let me tell you a little bit about Joan. So
she she's thirty years old and she was born in Brooklyn.
Her parents both died in a house fire when she
was eight, so she was adopted by her aunt Alice
and Alice's husband, Frank. So this was pretty awful because
(28:16):
Joan told Martin, her husband, when she was older, that
Frank had abused her. So this is her adopted father
slash uncle. Joan didn't say what the abuse was, but
it was insinuated that it was sexual abuse. This is
the relative I told you who they wanted to do
the blood type on to see if his blood matched,
(28:36):
and it didn't. He was not type. Oh that doesn't
necessarily mean anything, but that is a theory that goes
out there that this is some twenty years later or whatever,
Frank coming and something came up with Joan, and Joan
was going to spill the beans on this and Frank
came and killed her. But that's why Frank was investigated,
(28:56):
and everything else is pretty standard. She meets Martin is
at Harvard Business School. She got a job with a
publishing company, and they seem to have a really nice life.
There is not much on her background. Frank does stand out, though,
her uncle, who she says was abusing her.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, worthwhile investigating. You know, when you start talking about
blood typing, I did this, you know, early on in
my career. I'd want to look at the analyst notes,
you know, and see how they did the typing. We
would grade the typing. You know, do you have because
when you're typing, you know, you have this antigen you know,
you basically are looking for this glutenation and it's where
(29:38):
you add the various blood typing components and you get
these cells that group together they kind of stick together,
and sometimes you can get them to stick together real strong,
and so it's like very obvious, Okay, this person's type A.
But sometimes a few of them stick together, and you go,
I think that's type A. How strong this segglutination is
(30:02):
and it can be a little bit iffy. So, you know,
if they eliminated this adoptive father or this uncle through
blood typing, I would say, yeah, likely he's not typo.
But I think there is still a possibility that that
blood typing done in nineteen sixty one was wrong, you know,
And if the evidence exists today, then just let's get
(30:25):
these swabs out, if they collected swabs or however they
collected these various blood stains, and just do the DNA,
and I with what I'm seeing, I think you have
a good chance that you're going to have a thunder
DNA in this crime scene.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Well, let's go down a little bit of a victimology hole.
This is I did not really believe the gone girl theory,
but that is a prevailing theory on the internet, which
tells you this is a very recent theory. Okay, you know,
the idea, of course, is that she's gone missing. How
could this happen. It's, as you had said, not enough
blood to say she's dead, and that she could have
(31:01):
walked off on her own. You know, they see this
woman whose days. So when asked, I think, well, why
would she want to do this? I think the answer is, well,
she probably wanted to run off with a lover or
escape the oppressive lifestyle of being a housewife in the
nineteen sixties, which I get, except there's no proof of
(31:21):
any of that, or that she adored her kids. She
seemed to really love Martin. They didn't seem to have
any problems. But this is what's funny. There's a big
deal made about the fact that Joan checked out twenty
five mystery books which at the library, which are talking
about murder and disappearances. But the author, Stephen Ahern, that
(31:43):
I told you about, he actually went back and did
a big review, and she had only checked out a
few of them, much smaller amount. And it doesn't really
matter anyway. I mean, I love mysteries, that doesn't mean
I'm going to gone girl myself.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I think there's a lot of boyfriends and husband very
nervous because they're seeing their wiser girlfriends reading all these
true crime books about murder, right.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah. I don't know if I would put any weight
on that whatsoever. And I you know, kudos to that author,
Steve Ahern, for actually doing the leg work and showing
you know, kind of the if you want to say,
you know, how much weight to put on that that
bit of information. I think when you start talking about
the online community, of course, there's a lot of debate
about all these various scenarios and how to assess these scenarios.
(32:31):
Part of maybe the issue is not necessarily having the
experience of going into a lot of homicide scenes and
being able to interpret what is going on in those scenes.
And I've got a fair amount of experience doing that,
well above the average person in law enforcement. And with
(32:53):
what I am seeing here and we're talking, she drops
off Lilian and Douglas back at Barbara's house at one
fifty five, and then you have the woman yell or
the female yell. You've got Barbara seeing Joan in a
coat at two fifteen. I mean, we were talking twenty
minutes and you've got all of this. If Joone's doing this,
(33:15):
she's doing you know, she's throwing herself into the wall
and cutting herself or somehow beating herself and wandering through. Yeah,
and she's doing this spontaneously. This just is not adding up.
And then of course we've got you know, the phone
that's been torn out. We've got a bloody fingerprint that
supposedly doesn't match Joan. Who is that? You know, if
(33:39):
they truly did eliminate all the possible sources of contamination,
that's an item of evidence that I put a lot
of weight on. It's her blood on the phone that's
been moved, and we have indications that you know, the
phone's been ripped off the wall. You've got the TV
stand that it was underneath where that phone was located
(34:00):
it at. You have the phone book that's been opened
up to the emergency services, and you have a bloody
fingerprint on the phone that's not Jones significant. You know.
So I really really strongly like if I were to
be looking at this case, it I would say Joan
is dead and her body was removed. That is my
(34:20):
predominant theory, and my focus today would be trying to
find a Fender DNA either inside this kitchen with those blood.
You've got isolated blood drips, I mean This would be
something that just stands out to a well versed crime
scene reconstructionist, DNA analyst. You have blood trails throughout the
house that you can't say as Joan or not Joe,
(34:41):
and you have the blood stains outside and on the car.
Those are all target items, you know, So that latent
print and DNA on some of these isolated stains, that
would be the initial thrust of my forensic investigation of
this case, and that likely would I think support theory
number one in my mind.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Okay, I wanted to throw out the idea of Martin
the husband, hiring somebody. He was thoroughly investigated. They had
no financial problems, they had all by all accounts, a
good relationship, no stress. He had really like nothing that
we can see to gain from her disappearance. There was
(35:23):
no life insurance policy, he didn't have an affair. He'd
ended up getting married, but a long time from then,
and then he died in two thousand and nine. So
my question would be who else would know when is
the right time to do this? It happens right kind
of perfectly. David's having a nap. I guess maybe when
(35:43):
he's waking up, But I guess somebody who's watching, maybe
somebody who's been stalking her, right, and then there's a
stolen vehicle. But I'm just wondering if this would ever
be a higher It just feels like it's really risky.
Somebody would really have to have either been watching her
or had been told about what is happening in her house,
(36:05):
because it does feel a little isolated. I don't know,
just thrown it out there.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
No, I think it's a very real possibility whether the
offender whoever killed, or is hired, or would just happened
to be inside this house for one reason or another.
You know, that all just adds up with what I'm seeing.
I would not discount that as a possibility. It wasn't
done very well. And the reality is is that you know,
these hitmen that get hired, there's very few true professionals
(36:33):
out there. Good to know, Yeah, you know, there are people,
for sure, And I think in my career, I've only
got one case, and it was not when I was active.
It was a case I did for a TV show,
Original investigator, you know, worked with the original investigator and
went to the crime scene and looked at everything. I'm going, yep,
This is probably a pro based on the totality of
(36:55):
everything that this killer was able to do. So most
of these hired hit men are just you know, somebody
who's willing to commit the crime and may have never
done something like this before. So that's I can't you know,
conclude anything looking at the crime scene, as are we
dealing with a hired hitman. I just think Joan was
(37:15):
confronted by somebody in that kitchen, try to get to
the phone, and then is now somehow being injured to
the point of having bleeding injuries of some type to
where you know, they can perform blood pools and contact transfers.
And then whether it's Joan or whether it's the offender,
there's dripped blood in the kitchen and throughout the house
(37:37):
ord I shouldn't say throughout, but at least up to
the master bedroom. Then why why go to the master bedroom?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I think that's what the police think too, So their
very best theory is, you know, when they talk to
Martin and he says she has no enemies, She's never
had a conflict with anybody. Everybody describes her as lovely,
very shy, very committed to her family. And he's the
same way. So they just say they land on the
(38:05):
best theory they have, which was that she was stalked
most likely and was the victim of a violent abduction,
which Martin says, I can't even believe that would happen.
But they think that when Martin was out of the
house the day that she went missing, that this was
somebody who had been watching or somehow knew. Maybe it
(38:26):
was like the milkman, not the milkman, but maybe somebody
who knew that Martin left every day. And the police
believe it would have been very easy for the attacker
to have wrapped Joan up in a great charcoal top
coat the one that's missing, and maybe with that hanger
on top of her car and carried her through the
woods onto Virginia Road, or he could have driven his
(38:50):
own car into the driveway the Oldsmobile and carried her out.
I still don't know why there would be blood marks
on the outside of her car, unless maybe she was
grabbing it and fighting and left blood before he shoved
her into the Oldsmobile, if that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
No, well, there's no photographs I can take a look
at of the blood marks on the car, but I
think the way you described him, it sounded like you
had some dripped blood or a contact transfer. This could
be just a matter of the body, you know, if
you're having it. Because this Jones car, this is a
single lane wide driveway, so Jon's car takes up the
(39:31):
width of this driveway. So if like let's say the
stolen car is the disposal car, you could see where
the offender is having to carry Joan past her car
in order to get out to the stolen car to
put her in the trunk or wherever he puts her.
It's possible you could have some you know, drips off
of Jan's body. This is what we see sometimes when
bodies are removed by the coroner's deputies or the death investigators.
(39:54):
So it's it's a form of scene contamination for us,
or it could be the offender himself. He's got still
a bleeding injury. So it's so hard to say without
looking at the photos. And there could be probably numerous
explanations for that. But I don't think I can say
anything that, oh, it must be Joan touching the outside
of her car. I don't think that that is a
(40:16):
singular conclusion that could be made with the information that
we have.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Okay, one more theory. The investigators continue kind of pressing
you with Frank the adoptive father slash. I'm just going
to say uncle who she lived with, who it sounds
like was abusing her. That's what Joan said. So I
told you the blood type didn't match. They start having
a discussion with Frank's now estranged wife, who is Jon's aunt.
(40:46):
And in the month leading up to her disappearance, Frank
had been trying to get his wife back to move
back in, and Joan had been writing letters that the
police had back and forth. This is just a month
before saying at age thirty, you don't know this, but
your husband abused me. You cannot go back to him.
(41:06):
Do not do it. They gave him polygraphs. They were inconclusive.
We know how we both feel about polygraphs. But there
wasn't the blood type and they couldn't ever charge him.
But actually seems like that to me, seems like our
best suspect rather than a random person. What do you
think was.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
He compared to the bloody print on the telephone did
not match. So, I mean, you have two forms of
physical evidence not matching him. His fingerprints and his blood type. Yeah,
I definitely put a lot more weight on the fingerprint
evidence that they excluded him as being that bloody print
(41:45):
less weight on the blood typing. I mean, obviously there's
family history that leads to Jones victimology and why you know,
maybe Frank has a motive to make her disappear, but
right now the evidence is showing that.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah. Well, letters are tricky because he could have easily
gotten a hold of those letters and read if his
wife kept them, and I'm sure she did. But you're right,
there's nothing against him, and it sounds like he had
an alibi. I mean, we know how we feel about alibis.
They could be greater, they could not be right. But
this ends up being a case that, as I said,
goes col goes unsolved. And there are i mean just
(42:23):
lots of sightings of Joan Rish throughout the years. In
nineteen sixty eight, there had been sightings as far away
as Chicago, and we're in Massachusetts when this happens. There
was one in a trailer park in Arizona. But nothing's
ever come out of any of this. So we don't
have a body, we don't have any idea what happened,
and you've got two little kids who ended up with
(42:44):
no mother.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
And I'm assuming that this was a relatively high profile
case for the area.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yes, absolutely, just an enduring mystery.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah, I will say, like with higher profile missing persons cases,
we often get dozens of, not hundreds of sidings. I've
even got a case where family had a false siding
of their missing person and it wasn't this one women's sister. Unfortunately,
their loved one was dead and had long had been
(43:13):
dead for a long time at that point. But you know,
so that's I kind of don't put any weight on
the sidings of Joan after the case. Is that her
walking days, I mean, I think it's it's a remote possibility,
though I want to eliminate it. I really, I think
I agree with the authorities. Is that Joan was taken
(43:34):
out of the house, was wrapped in something, and was
placed in a car and driven away.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
A car that had been stolen.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
So yeah, well that's kind of a clue.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah, what a sad case. I mean, this is just
a woman living her life. We don't know what happened,
but we know that she was doing exactly what her
family said she always did. Taking care of her kids, Yeah,
watching over them, being a good mom, taking them to appointments,
doing everything. This is a nice house, doing everything that
she was supposed to be doing, a great wife, according
(44:05):
to Martin, and just in a flash, there's nothing to
even bury of this woman, and that is so sad
to me.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah, and for the family, that often is one of
the most difficult things because they don't have that answer.
I've talked to family members of homicide victims and let's
say they've had a loved one and go missing. That's
tortuous because they don't know what has happened. And then
once they get the answer that the loved what has
been found and had been killed. As horrible as that
(44:37):
is for them, it's at least an answer.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, I agree. Well, boy, this was a tough case.
I think I just relate to this woman a lot.
I'm so family oriented. I know you are too, and
I just really felt for her family and felt for
her whatever happened. Whatever happened was obviously very physically painful.
I hope whatever else happened after that was very swift,
because this was is not a good ending for her.
(45:02):
This is why I don't like unsolved cases. I need
a conclusion. I mean, I am not delusional enough to
think that she's in Cobbo right now hanging out. But
I like to know what happened, and I like to,
dang it, know that there's a bad guy that's been caught.
And we don't have either one of those in this case.
But I do like to throw you a cold case
bone every once in a while, because I know you
like him so much.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
There's meat on the bone in this case. In terms
of us, like if I were to open this up
as a case and I'm looking at it, I'm actually
getting excited because I'm seeing things that I know can
be used to solve the case. And if they have
any of this evidence, and from nineteen sixty one, it's
possible every agency was different in terms of how wether
(45:47):
how well they process the crime scene from this era
to how long they stored the evidence too, if they
can even find the evidence. But if that, if this
evidence still exists with modern technology, it's a solvable case.
If I'm assessing a case today that's that's this old
you know, part of it is, okay, what what was
the lead investigating agency? If there was a Lincoln Police Department.
(46:10):
Sounds like Lincoln, and it looks like based off of
her house photo, it's probably a relatively low populated area,
you know, So it's possible that this was a local
sheriff would have taken on this case, or they reach
out to the state to do it. And that's usually
(46:30):
fairly easy to figure out what you start digging into
the case itself, and that can be well, she never
went to corner, so you don't have an autopsy report,
you know, but it's just a matter of you know,
figuring out the history and who would have had jurisdiction
over this location and going from there.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Okay, well, what a case? What a case? Next week
we are off. I deserve it. I don't know if
you deserve it, but I deserve it. Do you deserve
it a week off?
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Paul?
Speaker 1 (46:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I don't know if I just over a week off.
But I can see where you. I mean, you you
do such a great job telling the story. I don't
know how you do it. So yes, I can you
need a mental break, I do, you know, a little
dandelion break, and then we can we can hit it
hard when you come back.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
How's that got it that sounds fantastic. Okay, we'll see you.
I'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Sounds good, Kate, take care Zoo.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Its most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold Cases,
is also available now
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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