Vanished in Blood (re-release)

Please enjoy this public release of a members-only episode from October 2023. For more of these bonus episodes and to get all of your TCB episodes ad-free, pop on over to tiegrabber.com/subscribe!

On the morning of October 24, 1961, Martin Risch left for Logan Airport to catch an early flight for an overnight business trip in Manhattan. Later that afternoon, the police were called out to his family home in Lincoln, Massachusetts.  A neighbor reported that the Risch’s 4-year-old daughter, Lillian, had returned from a playdate after finding the kitchen covered in blood. Her mother, Joan, was nowhere to be seen, but her 2-year-old brother was safe in his bed.

Join us at the quiet end for Vanished in Blood. After Joan Risch was reported missing, there was speculation throughout the country about what could have happened to this wealthy young mother and homemaker. Early theories were that she had staged her death to escape a life she no longer wanted, that she had undergone a botched abortion, or that she had been assaulted, abducted, and murdered. Today we’re going over the events of October 14, 1961 as well as the years before and the years since Joan’s mysterious disappearance.

Sources

A Kitchen Painted in Blood by Stephen H. Ahern

Joan Carolyn Risch, The Charley Project, ret. 10/4/2023, https://charleyproject.org/case/joan-carolyn-risch

The Mysterious Disappearance of Joan Risch, The Grunge, Jennifer Deutschmann, 2/15/2022, ret. 10/2/2023 https://www.grunge.com/768932/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-joan-risch-explained/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery, Ti Grabbers, I'm Jill, and
I'm Dick. On the morning of October twenty fourth, nineteen
sixty one, Martin Risch left for Logan Airport to catch
an early flight for an overnight business trip in Manhattan.
Later that afternoon, the police were called out to his
family home, which was in Lincoln, Massachusetts. A neighbor reported

(00:53):
that the Rish's four year old daughter, Lillian, had returned
from a playdate after finding the kitchen covered in blood.
Her mother, Joan was nowhere to be seen, but her
two year old brother David was safe in his bed.
So join us at the quiet end for vanished in blood.
After Joan Rish was reported missing, there was speculation throughout

(01:16):
the country about what could have happened to this wealthy
young mother and homemaker. Early theories were that she staged
her death to escape a life she no longer wanted,
or maybe she'd undergone a botched abortion, or maybe she'd
been assaulted, abducted, and murdered. But today we're going to
go over the events of October fourteenth, nineteen sixty one,

(01:38):
as well as a little bit about the years before
and the years since Joan disappeared.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
And the beerford today is called Breakfast Exorcism. It's brewed
by clown Shoes. Great name for a brewery in Boston. Now,
this is an American Imperial stout, big eleven percent, so
we will be careful with it. But these guys makes
some very nice stouts.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yes, yes they do. I like clown Shoes a lot,
good one and they have some really cool artwork and
beer names.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yes they do. The beer is sitting in the sniffer
that we have. It's pitch black with a teeny teeny
tan head. The aroma is all booze and coffee, very strong, sure, yes,
and it tastes just like it smells, so bourbon and espresso.
It's not as boozy tasting as it was in the aroma,

(02:30):
and the coffee taste is stronger than lingers. Very nice beer,
big full bodied beer. We will share this bomber bottle
with a couple other people.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Okay, well, I see you've already got yours. So you're
gonna have to open a bottle for me at least,
So let's open it up, all right, Dicky, down to

(03:04):
the quiet end. This is a New England case. So
seems like it's been a while since we've been in
New England. It does, so why don't you start us
out with just a little background on Joan Okay So.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Joan was born Joan Carol and Bard May twelfth, nineteen
thirty She was the only child of Harold and Josephine Bard.
They began as an upper middle class family. Her father
served in World War One. Shortly after the war ended,
he became a sales manager with the Reading Ironworks, a
position that he held for eighteen years. The Redding Company

(03:41):
transferred him from Brooklyn to the Chicago area, but as
people know, the thirties were financially depressed times, and in
the latter part of the decade, Harold lost his position
at Redding when the company went bankrupt. So despite this
setback at age forty two, he may have secured a
new job in New Jersey by nineteen thirty nine. However,

(04:05):
there are other reports that suggest he might have still
been unemployed in early nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
So that's traumatic. I don't think we should understate that
you're living kind of a middle class, even an upper
middle class life. And then really the rug was pulled
out from under him.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
So that's significant, it is, And there's going to be
some more significant things happening in Jones' life.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh absolutely now, regardless of his employment status. At that time,
the family of three lived in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey,
and they had downsized, living in somewhat reduced circumstances. Instead
of having a large home, they now lived in an apartment.
They did have the second and third floors of a
three story building in Mountain Lakes. A real estate firm, Dailies,

(04:52):
occupied the first floor below them, so we can speculate
as to how long the family's downturn in fortunes may
have blasted. But the United States was already beginning a
massive rearmament preparations for World War II, so people with
management experience would soon be in demand again, and things

(05:13):
may have looked up eventually. But before the Bard family
could move back up to the economic class they'd been
accustomed to, tragedy struck. So Joan was just eight years
old when both of her parents were killed in an
apartment fire. So it was February twenty third, and Joan
was on school vacation, so she was staying with her

(05:35):
grandmother and that's when a passerby, Jim McFarland, noticed smoke
pouring out of the windows of the Bard's apartment and
he alerted some neighbors. Now, earlier that night, a neighbor
of the Bards had complained about the smell of smoke
in the area, but no one found a fire at
that point. So by the time Jim McFarland came by

(05:55):
the Bard's neighborhood, smoke was pouring out of the windows
of the Bard apartment, so he tried to get into
the apartment, but he couldn't. Josephine and Harold Bard both
died from smoke inhalation. Now, they weren't badly burned, they
died from breathing in the smoke. And also the family dog,
a German shepherd, died in this fire. There were some

(06:16):
rumors about the dog being in the basement wrapped in
a blanket, but the official report says that the dog
was just laying at the foot of the bed. Now,
after putting out the fire, firefighters found Harold Barred dead
on his bedroom floor. Andy had the telephone receiver in
his hand, so that kind of gives you the idea
he was going to call for help. Josephine had died

(06:38):
slumped in a chair, dressed in a robe, and it
looked like she had fallen asleep while playing solitaire. And
then the intense smoke had overcome both of them. But
it was a little funny because someone had smelled smoke
a lot earlier. So how long was this fire going on?
Rumors began to circulate almost immediately after this fire, and

(07:00):
they would persist into the nineteen sixties, according to Josephine's sister.
The fire commissioner reported that the fire was started by
a penny being put into the fuse box, causing a
short circuit in the wires behind the sofa, so the
sofa caught fire, and then they were overcome by smoke,
because you know, furniture, especially back then, really would go

(07:23):
right up in flames and release all kinds of chemicals.
So the Mountain Lakes fire chief said that the fire
was started by a defective lamp cord, and they decided
that it was just a tragic accident. So the fire
chief's report was published in the March second, nineteen thirty
nine Mountain Lake News, and it concluded that the fire
was a clear case of accidental deaths due to an

(07:46):
accidental fire. It was nothing more than a tragic, horrible accident.
But you know, some of the rumors about the fire
would lead to speculation about some kind of a connection
in nineteen sixty one, when Joan, as an adult, disappeared
from her Massachusetts home. Some argued that if the tragic

(08:07):
nineteen thirty nine fire was a murder suicide committed by
Joan's father, then maybe Joan herself may have suffered from
depression and fled her home and family in nineteen sixty one.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
That just sounds so far fetched, it really does, maybe
even impossible. And why would you go twenty two years
with no issues and then all of a sudden you've
got something triggering you from the fire? Please, Well, it
could happen.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
I mean the word you said trigger right there, It
could happen. But I think more than that, it is
possible the father did this. If he was unemployed and
he sent his daughter away for the night to stay
with the grandmother, it could have been a murder suicide
in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Again, that's very far fetched.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Okay, so you're going to go with what the fire
department decided. I will, okay.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
I mean, if it is a murder suicide, setting a
sofa on fire, isn't the way to do it.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Well, maybe not, Dick, But wasn't it kind of weird
that she was asleep in the chair. Why wasn't she
up trying to get out? That to me is suspicious.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
She's overcome by smoke.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, but wouldn't she at least get out of the
chair and try and get out. I could see if
you're sound asleep in your bed, that happens. But it's
a little strange to me that she was sitting up
and didn't do anything. It's possible. I'm not saying for
sure it was a murder suicide. I'm just saying it's
a reasonable thing that it could have been. But anyway,
that was a tragedy for Joan anyway that.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
It happened, Oh definitely.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
So after her parents died, Joan went to live with
her grandmother, but soon after that, her maternal aunt, Alice
and her husband, Joan's uncle, Frank, took Joan in and
she would be eventually adopted and change her surname from
Bard to Natras. So Joan was the oldest child in
that household, and she ended up having three cousins, Frank

(10:03):
Peter aged seven, James Benjamin aged six, and David Ahmer
who was aged four. Then another daughter, Evelyn, was born
in nineteen forty six, So four cousins.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Although they go from aunt and uncle and cousins to mother,
father and siblings.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
You're right, yes, in a practical sense, that's what they were.
But you know, she was already eight, so yeah, she
already did know who her parents were. So I'm not
sure how much this was accepted, how well she melded
into the family, because the family had a lot of.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Issues, Yes, they certainly did so.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
In the investigation of Joan's disappearance in nineteen sixty one,
there would be allegations of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by
Frank Natris on Joan. Frank was known to be an overbearing,
controlling man, and the allegations of sexual abuse were never proven,
but Joan had emplay their existence to her husband and

(11:02):
also to her cousin, Peter, who she ended up being
quite close to. She also allegedly told her aunt Alice
in the summer of nineteen sixty one, and that was
shortly before she disappeared, so there's been a lot of
focus on that.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
I would say, yeah, I think that's very interesting that
she told her aunt Alice, adoptive Alice, Yeah, who happens
to be married to the alleged abuser. Correct, it's just
before Joan disappeared, right.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
And I think that that was in connection with not
wanting Alice to stay with Frank because she was worried
about other relatives that he may abuse. So we think
that Joan sent a letter to Alice in an effort
to protect other people. But certainly since it happened near
to her disappearance, that does seem like it could be significant.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yeah, it does to me.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
Now.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Jones seemed to recover though, and really kind of thrive
after the difficult childhood she had. She was a hard
word working, intelligent woman and pretty well liked by all.
She was a private person, almost shy, and she graduated
with honors from Wilson College in Pennsylvania. Then she worked
in publishing houses in New York City, so she had

(12:14):
a career until nineteen fifty five when she married Martin Risch.
So she and Martin had a daughter, Lillian, in nineteen
fifty seven, and then they had a son who they
named David in nineteen fifty nine. In nineteen sixty one,
the Rish family ended up moving to Lincoln, Massachusetts, and
this was when Martin took a job with the Fitchburg

(12:37):
Paper Company. And it was after graduating high school when
Joan attended Wilson College in Pennsylvania, and that's where she
did kind of have a period where she was out
of her shell. She had a wide circle of friends.
She was social, but she always was an excellent student.
She loved to read. After graduating from Wilson, Joan worked

(12:58):
in book publishing and she had started out as a
secretary but had moved up. So that shows us that
she was good at her job because when her boss
changed positions, apparently he had her go with him.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah, they had a good working relationship.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yes, so she was known as a smart, kind of
a serious woman. So at the request of her aunt, Alice,
Joan did move back in with the Nattresses for a
little over a year before she'd met Martin, but then
she moved out when she and Martin got married. They
had met on a blind date when she was working
in New York and Martin was attending Harvard Business School,

(13:36):
and according to another aunt, Joan said, of that first date,
I have met the man I'd like to marry. And
they were married December twenty sixth, the day after Christmas
nineteen fifty five, two years after their first date, and
it would be two years after that when Lillian was born.
So right after their wedding, Joan and Martin had lived

(13:56):
in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and back then Martin
worked for Regal Paper Company. In May of nineteen fifty seven,
their daughter, Lillian was born, and by nineteen fifty eight
they were looking to move in the suburbs, so they
first bought a small home in Ridgefield, Connecticut, which would
be about an hour commute for Martin. Joan had quit

(14:17):
her job by then after Lillian was born, and then
had David in September of nineteen fifty nine, and then
it was nineteen sixty when Martin left to work for
Fitchburg Paper Company, and in nineteen sixty one he was
promoted to the headquarters, so this necessitated another move, and
that's when they found their really nice cape style home
in Lincoln, Massachusetts, which they moved into in mid April

(14:41):
of nineteen sixty one, so really Joan was only living
in that home several months when she disappeared.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Joan became friends with some neighborhood women, Barbara Barker and
Mary Jane Butler. In fact, the Barkers lived directly across
the street from the Rishes, and then Joan also renewed
friendships with college friends Sabra Morton who lived in Bedford,
and Sydney Harvey, who lived in Lexington. Now, at that time,

(15:09):
Lincoln was a very rural area and there were many
places where friends could meet and talk outdoors. The Rishes
apparently lived a low key life. They'd have occasional dinner dates,
and they'd visit friends, and they also socialized very occasionally
with Martin's co workers.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
So in mid October of nineteen sixty one, the Rishes
visited the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln with two other couples,
and then they all had dinner at the Rishes. One
of the female guests felt that Joan began acting nervously
that evening. Then the next day Joan called An old
college friend who she'd recently connected with. You just mentioned

(15:46):
Sabra Morton, and she offered to watch Sabra's son while
Sober got some work done, because I think Sabra was
in grad school. I think that's what it was. And
when Joan drove the boy back home, she's seemed to
Sabra to be very nervous about something. So nervous Sabra
said that she called her the next day to see

(16:07):
if anything was wrong. Now, on Monday evening, October twenty third,
the Rish family had eaten dinner and the kids were
in bed by eight pm. Joan and Martin each had
a glass of whiskey, maybe more than one because they
did finish the bottle. Martin had a meeting in New
York City the next day, and he'd be gone overnight
the next night. So as the Rishes went to bed,

(16:28):
everything in their lives appeared to be normal and very
much in order, like they had it together. Don't you think.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
They certainly seemed to be doing quite well. Yeah, he
liked his new position and enjoyed work. And I think
from everything we've read, Joan enjoyed being home and doing
gardening and reading and raising the kids.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
It really did seem that way.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
So Tuesday morning, October twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, that's
the day Martin got up at six point thirty to
get ready and for a business trip. At about six
fifty am, he backed his car out of the garage
to go to Logan Airport in Boston. He said goodbye
to Joan and drove off in his nineteen fifty seven Plymouth.

(17:13):
He made his nine am flight, and his business acquaintances
confirmed that he was in Boston all day on the
twenty fourth, and Joan had a pretty full day planned
as well. This should have been an ordinary day in
the life of Joan Rish. She did some work around
her house and watched over her children, Lilyian aged four,
David h two. And when exactly Joan and the children

(17:35):
got up that day isn't completely known, but we do
know by nine fifteen am they were up, dressed and
had eaten breakfast. Joan had also made the beds, washed
the morning dishes, and cleaned up the house. They seemed
to have gotten a bit behind schedule that morning, however,
and were rushing. Sabra called Joan at nine twenty am,

(17:55):
but they didn't talk long. Because Joan and Lilian had
nine thirty dental appointments in Bedford, Joan dropped David off
across the street with Barbara Barker, and since she was
running late, the visit with Barbara was also very brief.
Then Joan, with Lilian in her ten year old faded
blue two door nineteen fifty one Chevy, backed out of

(18:17):
their garage and drove off. Now, Lillian and Joan arrived
at doctor Goldstein's dental office in Bedford's Center. The trip
probably took them a little over ten minutes. Doctor Goldstein
looked at both Lillian's and Joan's teeth and he did
fill one cavity for Joan using zylacine as an anesthetic.
So this is a local anesthetic, and I'm sure you'd

(18:39):
agree with me that it wouldn't cause any change in
her consciousness or her mental orientation.

Speaker 4 (18:45):
No.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Well, while he was working on Joan, Lillian played in
a nearby room that had some toys in it. And
as Joan left doctor Goldstein's office, she shared some small
talk with a dental assistant. She actually told the assistant
that she was really happy living in Lincoln. She paid
for her dental visits and made an appointment to see
doctor Goldstein again in one week on October thirty first. So,

(19:09):
while Joan and Lillian were in Bedford, some routine things
had happened back on Old Bedford Road. So why don't
you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Okay? So first, the Ricius mailman put four letters into
their mailbox, and that was located across Old Bedford Road
from the Rish home, diagonally across from the Rish's driveway.
Two letters were from Martin's company, Fitchburg Paper. The other
two were a bill and an ad. Certainly nothing remarkable now,
even though Joan would cross Old Bedford Roads several times

(19:41):
that day, the mail was still in the mailbox when
the police arrived to investigate her disappearance. So that's one thing.
Right Around the same time, Joseph Pascowitz dropped off the
Rish's usual order for milk near the side entrance store
that led into the Rish's kitchen. The Rishus regular milkman,
Bernard Socket, was on vacation and Paskowitz, a foreman for

(20:04):
the milk company, filled in for him. Did you used
to get milk delivered to you?

Speaker 2 (20:08):
I think when I was really little we still did.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, yeah, I remember that when we get.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
A couple jars on the front porch, so that was
pretty neat.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
Joan didn't see either the milkman or the mailman on
the day of her disappearance. She also did not see
the garbage man. He also came in the morning emptied
the Rish's garbage can, and all three of these people,
the mailman, milkman, and garbage man did not see anything
unusual at the Rish home. To them, everything seemed normal
for a Tuesday morning.

Speaker 4 (20:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
So on her way back home, Joan had stopped off
at a store named W. T. Grant, where she bought
herself a bron and she bought some clothing for David.
Then she and Liian picked up some groceries. Lillian was
on her best behavior at the dentist and Joan was
really happy about that. She mentioned it to Barbara when
Lillian and Joan returned a little before eleven am and

(20:59):
went over to pick up David. Joan walked over to
the Barker house to get David, who had been there
for about an hour and a half. Barbara and Joan
talked about how David had behaved and how well Lilian
had done at the dentist. Barbara noted nothing unusual about
Joane's demeanor that morning, nothing at all. Now, according to Barbara,
Joan's spirits were extremely good. At eleven a m. On

(21:21):
the day of her disappearance, she walked David and Lilian
across the Barker's lawn and then across Old Bedford Road
to their home. And back at the house with Lilian
and David, Joan probably put her shopping away, took in
the milk, and put her purse in the downstairs closet.
She changed from a black wool skirt, blouse and the

(21:42):
shoes that she had worn to the dentist and put
on a dress, a sweater, and blue sneakers that were
trimmed with white. Now, I just can't help myself but
to say how far we have fallen since the sixties,
Because if I go to the dentist's, I'm going to
wear maybe my good jeans and maybe a blouse. Then
I'm going to come home and I'm going to put

(22:03):
on shorts and a T shirt like a total slob. Really,
she goes home and to get comfortable puts on a
dress and a sweater, so it makes me feel pretty lazy.
I just really like the idea of dressing up like
men wore hats. I just love all that stuff. So
I don't know why, maybe because I grew up watching
Nick at Night and all that, but anyway, I had

(22:24):
to comment on that. So shortly after Joan arrived home,
Walter Colburn, an employee of the clothes cleaning company that
the Wrishes used, showed up at around eleven fifteen am
to make his regular pickup. So he knocked on that
side door leading to the kitchen and she let him in.
Joan and mister Colburn spoke briefly, and later he said

(22:46):
that Joan had seemed normal and cheerful. She gave some
of Martin's clothes to Colburn and he left before eleven
thirty am, so he was only at the Rish house
for maybe five minutes or so. After Colburn left, Joan
made lunch for Lilian, David, and herself, and we think
she ate a sandwich and may have had a beer.
At noon, as was her routine, she took David upstairs

(23:09):
and put him in his crib for his nap, and
he usually slept until two pm. He'd take about a
two hour nap, which gave Joan some time for herself
and you know, some time to spend with Lilian as well.
So it was around one twenty pm when Barbara Barker
let her son Douglas walk over to the Rish home
to play with Lilian. Barbara watched Douglas walk by himself

(23:32):
up the Rish driveway and he went in through that
side entrance door. David was likely still upstairs sleeping. Even
though the Rish's backyard was pretty big, Lilian and Douglas
often played in the driveway in front of the Rish's
two car garage or in front of the house near
the driveway, and part of the reason is there was
no back exit from the house to the backyard, which

(23:55):
was kind of weird. And Joan may have alternated between
working in the yard, cleaning up inside, or reading in
the kitchen or living room while keeping an eye out
for the kids, But of course we can't be sure.
She likely was out in the yard at least during
part of this time, at least more than she was inside.
I guess she did love gardening, and she could usually

(24:16):
find things to do in the yard, and that way
she could keep an eye on the kids more easily.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Yeah, because they were playing outside.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yes, they were outside the whole time. But one point
Barbara looked out and thought that Joan was mowing her lawn.
But police would find the lawnmower in the garage when
they arrived, and they didn't think that she had used it. Instead,
she may have pruned some plants in the yard and
done some other gardening. And I guess she would have
done all this in a dress. She would have mowed

(24:43):
the lawn or pruned plants or done gardening in a dress. Amazing.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah, and that was probably a push mower too.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure it was. So they thought
that she prunes some plants because there were some fresh
plant clippings in a barrel in the Rish's garage.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah. Then at one five pm, Joan walked Lilian and
Douglas in Lilian's tricycle over to the Barker's house across
the street. Even though she brought the kids into the
Barker yard, she didn't speak with Barbara. At that time.
It was a little bit unusual for John to simply
drop off the kids without letting Barbara know, and a
lot of speculation about that.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Absolutely, that's a big point that a lot of people
bring up. But I also think nineteen sixty one, maybe
it wasn't that unusual. I mean, you would think she
would at least like holler in the door the kids,
aren't you out front or something? But when I was four,
I used to go around the neighborhood on my own
quite a bit. Nobody walked me to my friend's house,

(25:43):
so things were definitely different back then.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
Well, the main thing with this is the street, Old
Bedford Road was a fairly busy street.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
It was pretty busy, and there was a lot of
brush between the two houses, so it wasn't always a
clear view from one house to the other. Yeah, but yeah,
I'm sure there were concerns about the busyness of the street.
You're right. I think if I had lived on a
busy street it would have been different. Oh yeah, yeah, right.
Some have speculated that Joan might have seen an intruder

(26:12):
hiding in her house and you know, gone quickly to
get the children out of harm's way, but of course
gone back to her home to protect David because he
was still in the upstairs center bedroom. But she said
nothing to Barbara about the situation, which to me doesn't
make sense because I think if that was the situation,
she probably would have told Barbara something if she felt

(26:35):
there was danger, or even told Lillian or Douglas to
tell Barbara to call the police. But she just dropped
the children off, and it seemed pretty normal, at least
to the children. They were there at the Barker's swing
set and Joan returned to her house. So that aside,
Joan did take Lilian, Douglas and Lilian's tricycle across Old

(26:57):
Bedford Road. We know that, and we know that it
was around one fifty five pm. When questioned about this,
four year old Lilian didn't remember a second car being
in her driveway or anywhere near her house at that time.
After getting to the swing set, Douglas and Lilian no
longer had a clear view of the Riese house anyway,

(27:18):
So why didn't Joan tell Barbara that she had brought
Lilian and Douglas over to her yard if there was
no intruder. I think the simplest thing is maybe she
felt that they would be safe there temporarily and was
only looking for a short break for herself, maybe some
time to take care of David. In her mind, she
may have felt it was unnecessary to bother Barbara just

(27:38):
for this short time period. There had been speculation that
Joan had a man coming to the house for some
kind of romantic tryst, but there's no evidence of that
at all, And it doesn't really make sense anyway, because
she knew at that point that David would be waking
up any minute from his.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Nap, and Barbara Barker might be bringing the kids back
at any time. Exactly, it's just having a little little
noon or stuff. Nah, I don't think that's the case.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
It doesn't seem like something she would have done. And
if she was going to do that, I think she
would have planned it for a different time. Definitely, she
could have taken Liian over to Barbara's right at like
noon or so whenever she got back from shopping and said,
please keep them here. I have to do something. You know.
There could have been a lot different ways to do

(28:27):
that if she had something planned. So I really don't
think she did. Nope, So, except for a brief sighting
of Joan at two point fifteen pm that day, no
one acknowledged seeing Joan Rish After one fifty five pm
October twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, and that was when
she left her daughter and her neighbor's son, Douglas, at

(28:48):
the Barker's swing set across the street. So the mystery
of her disappearance really centers on just this like two
and a half hourish time period that afternoon, pretty short
time period really, So it was Barbara who saw Joan
in her driveway at two point fifteen pm. Like you said,
the Barker house faced the Rish home across Old Bedford Road,

(29:11):
but there were trees at the front of both properties
that really blocked a lot of the view between them.
But looking out of her kitchen window, Barbara could see
the Rish house and she could see the top of
their driveway, including the nose of Joan's ten year old
Chevy that was parked in her driveway. She couldn't, however,
see anything in the front yard or in the driveway

(29:33):
closer to the road, anything closer than the front of
the car. So for the first few minutes of the investigation,
when the Lincoln Police first arrived at the house, which
was like four forty PM, to investigate Joan's disappearance, it
would be Barbara who would be the primary source of
information about Joan and about the circumstances around her vanishing.

(29:56):
So what did Barbara have to say about this? I
know she wasn't completely insistent.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Now it changed a little bit. Her initial statement when
she describes seeing Joan around two fifteen she was wearing
a trench coat. I saw her run beside her car.
I saw something red. I thought she was chasing a child,
and the child was wearing a red jacket. She was
running with her arms outstretched. But in that same statement
she gave a slightly different version. It seems to me

(30:24):
that when she ran to the car, she went back
to the house again. I did see something red, and
this was about two fifteen pm. And then six months later,
Barbara added to her recollection that she heard a noise
as Joan was running down her driveway. She described the
noise as a scream, but more like a scolding type
of scream rather than pain or fear.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, like maybe screaming David, don't you go in the road.
Something right there, Yeah, which would be understandable.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
And this time she didn't recall that Johan was running
back to her house.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
I really just think witnesses always change things. If you
tell a story one time. The next time you tell it,
it's going to be a little different. It's not a
conscious decision. I just really think that's the way it is.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah. One thing that wasn't mentioned, and I don't know
if it's there any significance, but Joan's car was like
halfway up the driveway.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Which was unusual.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Yeah, yeah, it was in the garage. She backed out
of the garage to go to the dentist that morning.
You're right, why didn't she go back into the garage.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
That's a good question because it doesn't seem like she
had anything planned where she was going to drive anywhere after.
But of course we don't know. She may have planned
of going out to dinner or something later because her
husband was gone, any number of things exactly.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
I just found it interesting that the car not only
hadn't been pulled into the garage, it was like halfway
up the driveway.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Well, I think it's definitely worth noting.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yes, So Lilian and Douglas are both in the kitchen
with Barbara at that two fifteen sighting of Joan. Neither
of them could see out the window, but Barbara showed
enough interest in what she was watching out the window
that one of the kids asked her, what are you
looking at. Barbara answered that she was watching Lilian's mom
chasing something, and either Lilian or Douglas said, oh, she's

(32:13):
chasing David. He's running to the street.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
But the child hadn't seen anything. That was just an.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Interesting surmising Yes, because I guess David as a two
year old put him on the ground. He's going to run.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh, absolutely, yep.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
According to Barbara, that comment made sense, so she didn't
give the incident any other thought until after John had disappeared.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Right now, Jeannette Schwartz, who lived Kitty corner across the
street from the Rishes and next door to Barbara, would
tell the police that she heard a woman's scream sometime
between two and three pm. She had been playing bridge
with three female friends at the time. One woman believed
that the noise had been a cat, one thought it
was a child, and another of the women didn't hear

(32:58):
it at all. Only Jeannette thought it could have been Joan's.
So what was Joan doing in her driveway? If Barbara
was correct, The simplest account of what was going on
was that David woke up from his nap around too,
as he often did. Joan had dressed him in a
red coat or sweater and she was chasing him down
the driveway about twenty minutes after she left Lilian and

(33:20):
Douglas at the Barker's swing set. That would just make sense.
Maybe David was running toward Old Bedford Road and Joan
wanted to stop him. But there is a problem with that,
and that is that around four thirty PM, Barbara found
David upstairs in his crib and he was not wearing
anything red at that time, and there were no red

(33:41):
clothes lying in his room like he'd recently warned them.
He was wearing clothes for sleeping, and he was quite wet,
so it seems that he had never gotten out of
his crib from his nap. Barbara thought he'd been in
that crib for a long time, probably since noon when
he was put down. So the next possibility was that
Joan was trying to scare away an intruder from her

(34:02):
property by running down her driveway and confronting him. But
would it really make sense for Joan to act so aggressively,
and why was Joan chasing him and not the reverse. Also,
what about the red object? That Barbara saw moving down
the driveway in front of Joan. If Joan weren't running
after one of her children or after an intruder, what

(34:25):
had she been doing. There are some possibilities like maybe
a passer by or a motorist asked for help, Maybe
one of the children's wagons or bikes were rolling down
the driveway toward the street, or maybe there was an
animal in the lawn that she was trying to show away.
But even if any of those speculations were possible, it

(34:46):
still leaves us with the question why was Joan out
in her driveway at two point fifteen pm and not
back inside her house reading or taking care of David.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
What was she doing indeed right?

Speaker 2 (34:57):
And the most important question is whether was confronting an
aggressor of some kind in her driveway or dealing with
an everyday situation like protecting her son from traffic. So
probably whatever bad had happened to Joan that day did
not begin at two fifteen pm, but probably later, could
have been as early as two twenty pm, So we're

(35:18):
looking at two twenty pm as the beginning of the
window during which something bad possibly happened to Joan, and
then I think the end of the window is likely
three forty five pm, because that's when Lillian was dropped
off by Barbara back in the Rish's front yard. So
even if Lillian didn't go into her house right away,

(35:39):
Lilian probably would have heard or seen if there was
any attack on her mother going on, if it were
continuing until three forty five pm or later. What do
you think?

Speaker 3 (35:50):
Yeah, I think that's a decent timetable. Right.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
So about an hour and a half so before returning home,
Lilian was playing with Douglas Barker across the street, and
of course David was napping upstairs. Around three thirty pm,
Barbara was getting ready to do some shopping, so she
walked Lilian to the Rish house, but Barbara didn't enter
the house herself, so Lilian entered her house through the garage,

(36:16):
and she could hear David crying, but otherwise the house
was quiet. Looking for her mother, Lilian found what looked
like red paint on the floor and the wall in
the kitchen, A small table was on its side in
the hallway. There were some books and magazines on the
floor as well. So Lilian wandered around the house looking
for her mother, but she just couldn't find her. She

(36:38):
actually stayed in the house for about half an hour
waiting for her mom to appear, and when she saw
Barbara's car parked in the driveway at her house, she
did eventually cross the street by herself, which probably took
her a while because she'd been told not to cross
the street by herself. Oh so when she finally did
go across, she told Barbara that her brother was in

(36:59):
his crib and he was wet and crying, that there
was a mess in the house, and that there was
red paints spilled in the kitchen, and worst of all,
she couldn't find her mother.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
So Barbara took Lilian and her two kids over to
the Rish house, and the red stuff was blood and
was on the kitchen floor and smeared on the walls.
The telephone receiver had been ripped off the wall phone
and placed hanging over one side of a trash can.
The trash can was full of papers and another household trash,

(37:33):
including five beer bottles and two whiskey bottles. There was
also a broken teacup and a broken plastic clothes hangar.
His trash can is usually kept under the sink, but
now It was in the center of the kitchen, and
the table that was usually below the phone was tipped
over and pushed into the hallway. The under sink trash
basket was on the floor next to a beer carton.

(37:55):
So Barbara called out for Joan and got no response.
She went upstairs, gathered up the crying baby, and took
the children back to her house.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
I bet she was really afraid.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
Oh, I'd be petrified. Yeah. Then she called another friend
of Jones's, Mary Jane Butler, to see if Joan was
at her house. Mary Jane Butler had not seen Joan either,
so the two women went to the Rish house and
did a more thorough search.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
So to me, this is something else that you would
only do back then. Nowadays you would leave that house
immediately and call nine to one one.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
You sure would, right, But you.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Know, they don't want to bother the police or overreact,
so they go back to look around. But Barbara was
smart enough to tell Mary Jane, we should not touch anything,
and they're getting pretty frightened. So they were hesitant at first,
but they did move a table that had been left
in front of the cellar door, but there was nothing
in the cellar and when they still didn't find Joan,

(38:51):
they finally did call the Lincoln Police Department at four
point thirty three pm from Barbara's home phone, so it
only took about five minutes for an officer to arrive
at the home. Joan's coat that she had been wearing
when seen by Barbara. The trench coat was found hanging
in her closet, and it did not appear that Joan
had been bleeding on that coat. So whatever happened to

(39:14):
Joan must have happened after two fifteen, because Barbara said
that Joan was wearing that coat in the driveway at
two fifteen. Lilian had returned to the home at three
forty five, so whatever had happened to Joan happened within
those eighty five minutes or so. The police didn't have
much to work with initially, but they would get tips
from several people who had seen strangers in the area. Unfortunately,

(39:37):
none of these turned into Leeds. Next door neighbor Virginia
Keene said she had seen an unknown car in the
Riche's driveway around three thirty, and there were other sightings
of a woman who resembled Joan wandering on two highways
between two forty five and four thirty and one sighting
was near the street where the Rishes lived.

Speaker 3 (39:59):
Let's go over this timeline.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, it's important.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
So at two forty five someone reports seeing a woman
resembling Joan at this time walking west on Route two A,
and it's about three hundred yards from the Rish home.
The woman appeared to be walking aimlessly with no destination
in mind. She also looked cold. She was wearing a
loose fitting gray coat and had a scarf around her neck.

(40:26):
She looked like she was in her thirties. The witness
didn't see any blood or dirt on the woman's legs,
but she did appear to be untidy.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah, that's the word she used. Untidy.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Then somewhere between three point fifteen and three thirty, someone
reported a woman resembling Joan walking north in the medium
strip of Route one twenty eight near the Winter Street exit.
This is about five to six miles from the rishhome
and also across two lanes of traffic from either side
of Route one.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Twenty eight, So there's no way she could have walked
and been five or so six miles away in that time.
Pero right right, And.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
This witness described the woman wearing a white kerchief around
her chin, covering most of her head and the side
of her face. She was wearing a dark gray or
blue coat. She was walking with her head down and
seen dazed. The witness described the woman as stomping or
trudging alot and clutching her stomach as if she were
carrying something, and this witness thought that the woman had

(41:26):
blood running down her legs. Now, this is a woman
in a car that's driving like fifty miles an hour.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, the speed limit on one twenty eight.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Was sixty five, So she saw a lot. She really
did as she went past this woman.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
I really have I really questioned many of these eyewitness reports.
I have to tell you, I don't give them that
much weight. No, but the neighbors I do give a
lot of weight to what they saw. So between three
twenty five and three thirty, neighbor Virginia Keene was walking
past the Reash house. She was on her way home
from the bus stop when she saw a mysterious car

(42:03):
at the end of the ric's driveway. She described it
as grayish blue, a sedan that looked quite dirty, and
she said it was pointed toward the house. And she
thought it had Massachusetts plates, but she couldn't be sure.
But she did know that it wasn't one of the
Rici's cars. They had two cars, and she knew what
those cars looked like. So between three thirty and three

(42:26):
forty five, Hilda Ziegler, who lived right nearby and Virginia Road,
saw this mystery car back out of the Riciu's driveway
and then drive north up Old Bedford Road. Hilda was
driving down Old Bedford Road toward Route two A, and
she actually had stopped her car by the Riciu's house
to let the blue car back out of the driveway.

(42:48):
So to me, it makes it more believable that she
actually had to stop to let them out, so it
wasn't just something she saw in passing right. The car
did go past Hilda's car driving away from Route to A,
and she did didn't notice anything really unusual about the
car and didn't see who was in it. Then it
was at three forty five when Barbara Barker walked Lilian

(43:08):
Riche to the front yard of her home, and she
did see Joan's car in the driveway so assumed that
Joan was still home. This is when Lillian Wenton's side
and found the house in disarray with blood all over
the kitchen area. So between four fifteen and four thirty, Barbara,
later joined by neighbor Mary Jane Butler, looked for Joan

(43:28):
in the rish home and around the yard. At four
twenty five, a woman reported seeing a woman resembling Joan
walking south on the west side of Route one twenty eight,
about four miles from the rishome. So that also, I
can't believe she could have walked all that way, right, And.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
This is also across two lanes of traffic.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yeah, and busy traffic, busy traffic sixty five miles an hour.
So this woman described the walking woman to be about
thirty five and said the back of her legs appeared
to be splotched with brownish mud, and that she was
wearing a grayish colored coat with a white kerchief around
her chin. So it is very similar to the other
women's description, even though the location seems really different. And

(44:14):
this sighting is changed from the previous Route one twenty
eight sighting because this time she's not on the median
and she's actually changed directions. Also, this highway was under
construction at the time to expand from four lanes to eight,
so there may have been certain areas where traffic did
have to slow down, but neither of the witnesses said

(44:35):
that they were stopped or slowed down because of any
construction when they saw this woman. Right, So it was
at four point thirty three exactly when Barbara Barker called
the Lincoln Police from her house. But these highway sightings
really kind of complicated the investigation, and it leads us
to a series of questions like how likely was it

(44:56):
that someone attacked Joan after two fifteen pm she escaped
from her home and then was wandering Route two A
at two forty five. It's a very short time frame,
and the major question is why she wouldn't escape to
a neighbor's house or hide in the woods. There were
a lot of woods out behind her yard. And if
Joan had suffered some kind of accidental physical injury or

(45:19):
medical emergency, why hadn't she gone to Barbara Barker's home
or sought out another neighbor or friend to get help
because most of the women in the neighborhood were home
during the weekdays. Now, if you want to think maybe
she had amnesia, how in thirty to forty five minutes?
Did she walk five or six miles from the first
sighting on Route two A to the location of the

(45:41):
second sighting, which was that median Strip. Now, even if
someone had drove her from Route two A to Root
one twenty eight in a car, how had she been
able to cross those two lanes of a major highway
in the middle of the afternoon to get to the
median Strip. And if someone dropped her off at that
median strip, how did she walked across two lanes of
high speed traffic from the Median Strip to the west

(46:04):
side of one twenty eight by four twenty five pm,
which is where the third sighting took place. So if
she were walking on two A at two forty five
pm and or one twenty eight between three point fifteen
and three thirty pm, why was that mystery car backing
out of the reached driveway between three point thirty and

(46:24):
three forty pm. That just doesn't match up.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Something doesn't fit here.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
It really doesn't, So some of these sightings just can't
be correct in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
Now, when she vanished, Joan is likely wearing a white
was likely wearing white trimmed blue sneakers and her best
charcoal gray wool coat. She's believed to have worn a dress,
but there wasn't any description of it. She may not
have worn stockings. She did not often wear a hat,
none of them were missing from her wardrobe. Sometimes she

(46:55):
did wear a white scarf over her hair, and she
always carried her handbag and in this instance it was
still at home. She's believed to have worn her wedding
band and a single strand tight necklace of imitation pearls.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
So none of these sightings really indicate any consistent mental,
emotional or physical condition of Joan during this time period. Also,
no one saw the woman picked up on two A
or dropped off on one twenty eight by any car.
They only saw a woman walking the first route one
twenty eight sighting really only complicates that case and provided

(47:30):
very little help towards solving it. But the only thing
it may have done is have the effect of expanding
the area where the police would search for Joan. So
more significant than any of this to me is that
Joan was an intelligent, competent woman who loved her family
and didn't have any known serious medical or emotional problems.

(47:51):
So in the absence of severe trauma erasing her memory
and identity, Why would she be wandering down highways in
the middle of the afternoon without seeking assistants or trying
to get home to her children. Just doesn't make any sense,
not at all, not at all. I mean, I think
who she was and her character is a very strong
piece of evidence to me for what could or could

(48:13):
not have happened.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
So as police officer Mike mceugh's car pulled up at
the residence on October twenty fourth, Barbara quickly walked over
to the car and yelled, something terrible has happened and
Joan is missing. So Officer mceugh parked his cruiser and
walked up the risk driveway with Barbara. The first thing
he saw was Jon's nineteen fifty one Chevy parked up

(48:36):
the driveway a little closer to the road than to
the garage. He looked into the car, but he didn't
see anyone in the car, and everything seemed to be
in order, nothing out of place in the car. So
mceugh entered the house through the unlocked side entrance door
that opened into the kitchen. Immediately he saw the same
bloody kitchen, seeing that Barbara Barker and Mary Jane Butler

(48:57):
had seen there's a good deal of bled on the
kitchen floor that appeared to be smeared and dried, and
the telephone was ripped from the kitchen wall. Some McHugh's
first thought was that this was a suicide. He began
a search to the entire house and quickly surveyed the downstairs, upstairs,
and cellar, and in the process he tried to avoid
any bloody areas that would need to be investigated by

(49:19):
forensic experts. He continued to search outside and walked completely
around the house. He didn't find a body, which ruled
out suicide at least in the home itself. Woods in
the back of the Rish home were quite extensive, and
they began about thirty feet from the back of the house,
So McHugh pretty quickly decided that if they were going
to be searching the woods, he was going to need

(49:41):
some help, a.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Lot of help. At four fifty less than ten minutes
after he got there, he called for backup, and he
asked for the entire Lincoln Police Force to come out
to the scene. They contacted three hospitals in the area
and found out that Joan was not in any of them.
Between five and seven pm, they spoke to Martin Risha's employer,
Fitchburg Paper, the Massachusetts State Police, and taxi companies in Lincoln,

(50:07):
Conquered Lexington and Bedford to see if any of them
had picked up a fare on Old Bedford Road. That afternoon.
They also spoke with police departments in the surrounding towns
of Conquered, Lexington and Weston to see if they had
any information about Joan, and none of them did. Early
in the evening, the State Police brought a bloodhound to

(50:28):
join this search, and her handler gave the scent to
her from the blood stains in the kitchen and from
some of Joan's clothing, But surprisingly the dog, Sadie, went
out in the yard but did not lead the police
on any extended search. She would go back and forth
over to the Barker House, where we know Joan had
visited three times that day. Officers from both the State

(50:51):
Police and the Lincoln Police searched the woods around the
Rish House and also along Old Bedford Road and Route
two A that night, but they really found nothing. Other
officers canvassed the neighbors and everything pointed to the probability
that someone took Joan away in a vehicle that had
been most likely parked in her driveway behind her nineteen

(51:13):
fifty one Chevy.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Yeah, that seems the most likely scenario.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
It really does. The dog did stop at the driveway
as well.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
Now, Jones's husband, Martin, was finally notified around eleven o'clock
that night while he was in bed sleeping at the
Commodore Hotel. So Martin returned from New York City and
stayed at Saber Morton's house after completing his interview at
the State Police's Concord station. This is around three in
the morning, October twenty fifth.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
So police found most of the relevant forensic evidence in
the kitchen of the Rish home. The most disturbing evidence,
of course, were the bloodstains on the kitchen floor that
went from the corner of the kitchen where that wall
mounted telephone had been located, to the middle of the
floor several feet away. Police described most of this blood

(52:02):
as smears or streaks. The heaviest concentration of this blood
was along the walls of the kitchen corner where the
phone was, but there were also large, thin smears fanned
out toward the center of the kitchen. It looked like
someone had tried to clean up the blood on the
floor and had given up the blood. Evidence showed that
an attack, accident, or medical emergency occurred in that area

(52:26):
of the kitchen telephone. On the wall right below where
the phone was, near the opening to the hallway that
led to the upstairs, there was a six inch square
stain about two feet above the floor and fourteen inches
from that corner. Also a heavy stain six inches wide
and eighteen inches long pooled on the floor in the

(52:46):
kitchen corner below to the right of that telephone. In
the space along the wall that separated the kitchen from
the dining room, there were also thin smears on the floor,
the baseboard, and the lower part of the wall. In
addition to the arc of blood on the kitchen floor
near the phone, there was another heavy stain on the
floor on the other side of the kitchen, near the

(53:09):
doorway that led to the side entrance. The blood on
the floor was dry, though except for two or three
spots where the blood had pulled a bit and wasn't
completely dry. It was kind of tacky. There was also
a pair of children's corduroy overalls on a metal kitchen
stool near the doorway to the dining room, and a
pair of children's underpants that were on the kitchen floor

(53:32):
near the doorway leading to the side entrance. Both the
overalls and the underpants had blood on them, so they
think maybe they were used to this kind of half
assed clean up attempt. A table that was normally located
under the wall mounted phone was lying on its side
just outside the kitchen, and that was one of those

(53:53):
small tables that people would keep under their house phone
to keep like a pad of paper and a pen
to take notes or whatever write down a phone number.
There was also an apron on the floor in the
hallway just beyond that overturned table, as well as a
local telephone directory that was opened to the page for
emergency numbers. I have heard that the phone book had

(54:14):
been used by Joan's neighbors to look up the police number,
but I'm not sure. Are we sure of that that
it couldn't have been Joan that opened the phone book
to that page.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
No, we're not sure.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
We're not sure. And this was because there was no
nine to one to one service back then, so they
would have had to look up the number for the police.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
Right, Sorry to look at that. I think that's the
most likely thing. I do too. Bet her her friends
were looking for it, didn't find her and said, we
got to call the police.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
Yeah, and I'm sure the police know because they spoke
to Barbara, but we don't really know.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Barbara recalled that Joan had brought the children's underwear and
pair of corduroy pants with her when she brought David
over to Barbara's house at nine thirty that morning. A
child's drawing was lying almost on top of a portion
of the large bloodstain on the kitchen floor. Also, Barbara
confirmed that she had seen the drawing at four fifteen
PM when she came over with Lilian to look for Joan.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yes, so Barbara had seen Joan in a tan trench
coat at two fifteen, and that coat had been found
hanging in the downstairs closet. A gray wool coat purchased
from Bonwit Teller in New York, however, was missing. And
Joan's purse was in the house with money, keys, cosmetics,
and you know, all the everyday items that are usually

(55:27):
found in a purse. Nothing unusual. Then outside of the
house there was a trail of blood that led from
the kitchen door about twenty feet down the gravel driveway
to where Jones's car was parked. Two small stains were
close to the side entrance to the house. The nineteen
fifty one Chevy that Joan had driven had four separate

(55:48):
and distinct blood stains on it on the front, in
the rear of the vehicle, and then one in the
center of the top of the trunk lid, and oddly,
there was another coat hanger on the roof of Joan's car.
It didn't appear that anyone had opened the doors to
the car, and nothing in the car was disturbed. Police
believed that the blood trail had likely started in the

(56:09):
kitchen and went out into the driveway, not the other
way around. Police were aware by late Tuesday night that
Virginia Keene had seen a blue or gray car in
the reached driveway at about three twenty five that afternoon.
While the police initially kind of discounted her report on
the basis that she'd probably seen an unmarked police car,

(56:29):
additional reports tended to confirm her story because she would
know what time she was walking home from her bus,
and that would have been before the police got there.
So the police did actively search for the car, and
they did that well into December of nineteen sixty one
and beyond.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
The state police fingerprint expert and photographer found several fingerprints
in the kitchen. Bureau of Photographer report stated that investigators
arrived and began a photograph the kitchen looking for fingerprints
and other pieces of evidence. The next day, Jones' car
was investigated for evidence. The phone receiver hanging from the

(57:07):
waste paper basket was examined and this revealed a partial
latent fingerprint on the flat surface of the instrument. Blood
was surrounding this area.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Yeah, the police dusted the wall phone and they found
five partial latent fingerprints and several fragments of partial pom prints.
All but one of those prints were later excluded as
Martin's round the corner in the hall on the wall
a short distance from the phone, a partial pomp print
and partial fingerprint were found, and after a thorough examination

(57:38):
of the kitchen, various other articles throughout the house were examined,
but police found no other latent prints and no fingerprints
on Jones's car. A thumb print on the detached phone
receiver's speaker and a partial pomp print and fingerprint on
the wall in the hall around the corner from the
phone did not come from any member of the Rish

(57:58):
family or from any other known source. So the fingerprints
lifted on the evening of October twenty fourth were what
cleared both potential suspects in this case. Because the state
police compared more than five thousand prints with the crime
scene prints by nineteen ninety three, so it took a
long time, and they did this for years, and no

(58:21):
prints matched this set of unknown prints.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Never never found a match.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
No, never. All the roology report could state conclusively was
that the blood analyzed was type O blood, which was
consistent with Joan's blood type.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Yeah, along was at least fifty percent of the general population.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
I know, I'm getting to the head. It was estimated
that the amount of blood spilled within the entire Rish
crime scene was less than half a pint of blood,
much less than it looked like when you're viewing that
kitchen scene.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
I'd like to know how they can determine that because
somebody had attempted to wipe up the blood.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
I am totally with you on that, because who that
they didn't have a bunch of blood on a towel
or something, or that she didn't have clothes soaked in
blood when she was taken out of the house. Yeah,
so I think they did make some assumptions that really
couldn't conclusively be made. Now, Like my brilliant husband mentioned,
type OH is the most common blood type, so this

(59:18):
could have been just Jon's blood, or it could have
been someone else's blood, or it could have been a
combination of Joan and another person's blood. And like you mentioned,
there was that attempt to clean up, So I really
do think it's possible more blood was spilled than that
half pint, but maybe it wasn't there when the police arrived.
But the blood did appear to be pooled or smeared,

(59:41):
as opposed to blood spatter from a stabbing or a gunshot.
So this made the police theorize that the blood had
come from Joan's head, like if someone had struck her
with force with a fist or another blood instrument, and
maybe her nose had bled. Based solely on this small
amount of blood that they think they found, they felt
that Joan had not been shot or stepped, so this

(01:00:04):
led them to believe that Joan had likely had some
kind of an accident. But to me, that's way too much.
Assuming if she did injure herself, why wouldn't she have
gone to a neighbor And then why in the hell
would the phone be pulled out of the wall. That
doesn't make any sense at all.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
No. And the other thing is, despite saying, well, how
do they know that was only like a half pint
of blood, and if it was just a nosebleed, I
don't think it didn't bled that much.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
I would hope not. And then all over the place
like that, right, they didn't mention any drips like would
come from a nosebleed. So I guess a violent attack
is the alternate explanation for that bloody kitchen scene. Yes,
the absence of evidence indicating extensive violence at the crime
scene could be because there was some kind of sudden

(01:00:50):
attack that caused Joan to quickly comply with her assailant's wishes.
So like one or two hard blows may have been
sufficient to cause Joe to stop resisting, especially if you
combine that with potential threats of violence to her two
year old son who was upstairs, and if he wasn't awake,
could be waking any minute, so Joan could have decided

(01:01:12):
that getting that attacker out of her home was her
best option, even if she had to go with him
to protect her son.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
There's been a persistent idea in this case that someone
was assisting Joan with a home abortion and some sort
of medical emergency occurred, and that the person took John
with him just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
I can't imagine that she would plan to have an
abortion within such a short timeframe.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
Well, it's the same thing with like having a lover.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Over right, But why would you do something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
She planned a home abortion and someone was willing to
help her, He'd think she would arrange for childcare with
someone away from her house and allow herself the time
that would be needed. The hangars are odd, but at
least one of them was plastic, which would not be
used for an abortion. No, so it seems very far fetched.
And there was no blood on the hangars either.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
They weren't used. So the eyewitness report of seeing a
woman walking with blood flowing down her legs and clutching
her active and does make you think that maybe she
did have an abortion, But there's too many other things
that just point away from that theory.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I agree. So now another idea is that she staged
the scene, and this is like the book or movie
Gone Girl, where the woman takes her own blood and
smears it around to make it look like a crime
scene before disappearing on purpose. The problem here is Joan
seemed like a happy, loving wife and mother and she's

(01:02:39):
never been found, which would be really extraordinary if she
could just make herself disappear like that. Joan was on
daily medication for her asthma, and it's unknown if she
took that with her. But because the sniffer dog only
tracked Joan's scent between her house and Barbara's and then
in her driveway, it does seem like she could have

(01:02:59):
got into a vehicle in her driveway, and that would
lead us to think it was the bluish gray car
seen by Virginia Keene and Hilda Ziegler.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Sounds reasonable.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
After Martin was told about Joan's disappearance, he immediately checked
out of his hotel and took a flight back to Boston.
He was at Boston Logan Airport at one fifteen a m.
So he did rush. He heard at eleven p m
about it. The day after Joan disappeared, the search continued
and divers even searched the Cambridge Reservoir, which is right

(01:03:31):
near where those sightings were of a woman matching her description.
The town of Lincoln offered a reward, and so did
a local newspaper, and all tips and sightings were followed
up on with no success finding Joan, and Martin was
quickly ruled out as a suspect. He'd been in New York,
there were no known marital problems, and he was questioned

(01:03:53):
and cooperative with the police. Actually, Martin would never remarry,
although he would live another forty six years after his
wife disappeared, so take what you want from that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
The car that was seen backing out of the Rische
driveway on the day of Jones's disappearance has been described
as a nineteen fifty four or nineteen fifty six Plymouth
and at first the police thought that Virginia Keene had
seen an unmarked police car or had been mistaken about
the time, but Hill, deciding backed up Virginia's claims. Also,

(01:04:24):
the milkman that day had seen a car in the driveway,
but he couldn't remember what time it had been. The
regular Milkman reported seeing a similar car in the Rish's
driveway five days before jones disappearance. That was October nineteenth,
So that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Leads me to think maybe someone was watching her. It's
nineteen sixty one, maybe a door to door salesman, anything,
and there are some possibilities like that. There are Several
weeks after Joan went missing, there was another witness to
that car. An anonymous man called the Boston Record American
newspaper with a tip and he said he had seen

(01:05:00):
the car and the Rish's driveway that day and he
had taken note of the plate. This was odd that
he waited so long to call and also that he
wanted to be anonymous. But he said that the plates
were Massachusetts plates and started with P two four, so
he didn't have the full plate number. The police tried
but weren't able to find this anonymous caller, but they

(01:05:22):
did follow up on the tip and that led them
to a possible eleven hundred cars. That's a lot to
deal with. Sure, they did track down one car to
a man in Medford, Massachusetts, and for some reason they
thought he could be a suspect he had stolen the car.
But when that car was processed. There was no evidence

(01:05:42):
that it had been used to abduct Joan Rish And
you'd think if she'd been put in a car bleeding
like that, there'd be something, But there have been similar
tips and cars like that over the years, and all
of it has just led to nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
There was one other person the police investigated as a
person of interest. His name was Robert Foster, and he
was a federal parks agent. Around the time when Joan vanished,
the government had plans to turn the neighborhood into what
today is Minute Men National Historical Park. The government was
going to buy all the houses. It was Robert's job

(01:06:18):
to go around the neighborhood and notify the homeowners of
the process and see if they were interested in getting
an appraisal. And some of the women who lived there
complained some of the men doing Robert's job had been
way too friendly. Whatever that means.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
Yeah, Well, these guys are going around during the day,
so it's mostly going to be housewives, right, Yeah, And
I guess some of them were a little flirtatious or
friendly as you put it, which isn't that unusual to me.
No one said that anyone was creepy or did anything right,
and you'd have to.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Be friendly enough to get people who listen to you. Oh, absolutely,
in your proposal.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Anyone that comes to the door like that, they always
are smiley and friendly. Yeah, it can seem a little creepy,
but it is normal. When Joan first went missing, neighbors
had told detectives that they felt like Robert also had
overstayed some of his visits, like it was hard to
get rid of him. So Robert was interviewed, and Robert
said that he had talked to Joan as well as

(01:07:19):
another unidentified woman in Joan's home back on September twenty fifth,
about a month before she disappeared, but he said there
was nothing odd about their interactions, and he also did
have a pretty good alibi for October twenty four, so
he was cleared as a suspect.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
There's another tip in nineteen sixty three coming in from
Serene Gearson, who was a forty year old reporter with
a local newspaper. She went to the public library to
check out a book titled Into Thin Air, which was
a novel about a woman who disappeared and left only
blood smears and a towel behind. Serene noticed that Joan
Rish had checked out the book on May eleventh, nineteen

(01:07:58):
sixty one. Serene also picked up another book on the
disappearance of Brigham Young's twenty seventh wife, and found out
that John had checked out this book on September sixteenth,
nineteen sixty one. So this got the attention of the police.
Might seem a little odd that Serene found these two
library books, but she was a reporter and may have
been looking for books checked out by Joan Rish as

(01:08:20):
part of an investigation. Joan was known to be a
big reader who often went to the library, and a
group of volunteers looked into Joanes's library history. They found
a total of twenty four books she had checked out
of the Lincoln Library from April twentieth, nineteen sixty one,
until her disappearance. Many of the books were related to
people disappearing, but there were also many books which were

(01:08:42):
not about this subject. Many of the books were about history, nature, travel,
and murder mysteries. None of the books were how two
books on how to disappear or how to change your identity.
So we're left thinking this may or may not mean something.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Yeah, I mean it is curious. It's definitely something that
got my attention. But at the same time, if you
are reading twenty four books, and I don't know what
percent of them were having to do with something like this,
but she was known for enjoying murder mysteries, so right there,
that could account for a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Certainly could, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
But another thing looked into by police was Joan's relationship
with the Natrous family, her adopted family who raised her.
There were some letters that offered insight into her childhood
with the family. In nineteen sixty two, Jones's aunt told
the police outright that Frank Natrius had sexually abused Joan
as a child. The aunt said that Joan had told

(01:09:40):
her adopted mother, Alice, about this just about one week
before Joan disappeared, so interesting, but the timing could be
coincidental and it's not concrete. The aunt went to the
FBI and told them that she believed Frank was responsible
for Joanes's disappearance or he had paid his son or
someone else to do something to her. And Alice did

(01:10:02):
confirm receiving a letter from Joan prior to her disappearance
that told her that Frank had molested Joan, but Alice
said that she burned it after reading it, and Alice
said that she believed she actually got that letter in
September of nineteen sixty one, so more like a month
earlier than a week. But it's also important to note

(01:10:24):
that Frank's fingerprints did not match the latent prince found
in the Rish home, and Frank also had an alibi.
He did take two polygraphs which were both inconclusive. So
what happened to Joan? If it was suicide, she would
have been found. If it was a botched abortion, she
would have been found, or she would have gone for
medical help. If someone took her. Why would she be

(01:10:47):
walking down Route two A or Route one twenty eight?
Could she have escaped an abductor, but then she would
have had to escaped and been picked up again by
the abductor, or she would have been found. The stage
they also doesn't make a lot of sense because there's
no known reason for it, and she was known by
everyone in her life as a very devoted and caring mother.

(01:11:10):
There's one more fringe theory, and that is that Joan
went to the dentist for an abortion that morning and
had bleeding after she was at home. She had eleven
cavities filled at once in her visit weeks before her disappearance,
and then she went back for one more filling on
the day she disappeared. So that's made some people wonder

(01:11:30):
could her appointment on October twenty fourth actually have been
to have an illegal abortion. I just see a lot
of problems with this theory. Of course, the dentist denies it. Also,
why would you do it with your child with you?
I just don't see it. She could have easily had
someone babysit Lilian if that were the case. Yes, there's

(01:11:52):
no evidence of it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
Well, her cross the street neighbor took care of the
baby whilst she and Lily and went to the dentist.
It would have been easy to drop both kids off
with the neighbor and going to addientist by herself and
had the procedure.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Yes, so I think if that was something she was
going to have done, she was a smart enough woman
to arrange it more carefully. Absolutely, if Joan was kidnapped,
which is where I'm kind of leaning, the blood could
have been from an attack that she fought, then she
could have been taken away in a car. The blood
trail does stop in the driveway, and this is possible

(01:12:27):
and it makes the most sense to me. But this
also means that the sightings of a woman walking down
the road have to not be Joan and that's not
too far fetched. Like eyewitness reports are known for being inaccurate,
and the fact that she disappeared and has never been
found to me points to a kidnapping and probably a murder.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Yes, And given the length of time that there's been
no resolution to this, you have to think that Jon's
been dead for that time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
I think so. I think if it had been anything else,
that something would have been found, we would have figured
something out. Yes, so a really strange case. We don't
know the answer, so let us know what you think.
We'd love to get some feedback on ideas. Also, we
always love to get case suggestions for other similar mysterious cases,

(01:13:16):
and you can send us an email to True Crime
Brewery at tigrebber dot com or leave us a voicemail
by clicking on the link in our show notes or
by going to our website tigrebber dot com. Also, if
you haven't left us a review on Apple podcasts, I
would really love it if you would. We're right on
the verge of having one thousand reviews, So enough of that.

(01:13:38):
We're going to be back soon with our regular scheduled
TCB episode, which will be on the Tote Family, and
we look forward to seeing you all next time. At
the quiet end.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
We'll even save you some seats down here.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
That's so nice of you. We'll see you later, guys,
Bye bye.

Speaker 4 (01:13:55):
Bye guys, at and decly