Going West: True Crime - Joan Risch // 347

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

In October of 1961, police reported to the home of a 31-year-old Massachusetts woman after a neighbor spotted blood inside her house. When police began investigating, it felt clear that she had been met with foul play. But after finding library books on murders and disappearances similar to her own, suspicions were raised, begging the question: what really happened to Joan Risch  BONUS EPISODES Apple Subscriptions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-west-true-crime/id1448151398 Patreon: patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Joan's Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/196335677/joan-carolyn-risch 2. Martin's Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/172928385/martin-donald-risch 3. Anderson Independent-Mail: https://www.newspapers.com/image/812685762/?terms=joan%20risch&match=1 4. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: https://www.newspapers.com/image/52772631/?terms=harold%20bard%20josephine%20bard&match=1 5. A Kitchen Painted in Blood: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Kitchen_Painted_in_Blood/EbUEEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PR3&printsec=frontcover 6. Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/swhph8/the_bizarre_disappearance_of_joan_risch/ 7. Medium: https://icestationpoetry.medium.com/into-thin-air-what-is-the-likeliest-explanation-for-the-disappearance-of-joan-risch-1bdd4953b4e 8. Wicked Horror: https://wickedhorror.com/features/february-2022-missing-person-of-the-month-joan-carolyn-risch/#:~:text=Joan%20graduated%20with%20honors%20from,Crowell%20Co. 9. Prabook: https://prabook.com/web/martin_donald.risch/406588 10. Uncovered: https://uncovered.com/cases/joan-risch 11. The Boston Globe: https://www.newspapers.com/image/433749083/ 12. Lost n Found Blog: https://lostnfoundblogs.com/f/into-thin-air 13. I Can't Believe It's Not Fiction: https://icantbelieveitsnonfiction.com/2017/07/05/joan-risch/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host, Tee. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going Last. Hello, everybody. You probably can't tell because he sounds so good and strong. He is not feeling good today. He has a chest infection so he's going to kind of be making comments in the background

while I tell the majority of today's story. So that will explain that. But thank you for being here today anyway. A little short of breath today. Nasty kind of chest infection going on. So trying to heal up and take it easy. Yeah, not the best condition for you to like talk and tell a story. And so again, thank you for being here. Heath, we love you. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. And thank you to Anna for recommending today's case. This is a very mysterious story at a 1961 out of 19.

Does that make sense? I think that makes sense. Yeah. It is out of New England, so what do you say? Let's do it. All right, guys, this is episode 347 of Going West, so let's get into it. In October of 19, police reported to the home of a 31-year-old Massachusetts woman after a neighbor spotted blood inside her house.

When police began investigating, it felt clear that she had been met with foul play. But after finding library books on murders and disappearances similar to her own, suspicions were raised, begging the question, what really happened to her? is the story of Joan Rich. Joan Carolyn Bard was born on May 12, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father Harold Bard was a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, and after serving in the army and settling back in Brooklyn with a job as a sales manager, he married Josephine Amher and the two had their only child Joan. They were very devoted members of their church and were called a well-known and prominent family by their local paper.

When Joan was young, the family relocated to the lush green landscapes of mountain lakes New Jersey, which is only about 35 miles or 56 kilometers away from Brooklyn. So they left the big city for a very quaint lakeside life. But then, on Thursday, February 23rd 1939, an unexpected tragedy changed the course of Jones life forever. So that night, a fire broke out in a barred home and our parents were unable to escape it. Now thankfully, 8-year-old Jones just happened to be away for the night at her grandmother's house, or it's very possible that she would have perished that night as well, but sadly, both of her parents died in that sudden fire. Her father was found with the phone in his hand, and her mother was found sitting in her

chair in the living room. This fire was actually deemed suspicious by the media, but the cause was unknown, so it is still a mystery to this day. Josephine and Harold's funeral was held at the same Brooklyn Church that hosted their wedding, and with that, Joan was sent to live with her aunt and uncle, the natrous family, and they adopted her officially, changing her surname from Bard to Natras. But unfortunately, this change would bring even more tragedy on to Joan because according to accounts of friends and family after her disappearance, Joan was sexually assaulted

by her uncle while she was living there. But despite her tumultuous childhood, Joan remained unflinching in her path and continued on from high school to attend Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and she was even awarded a scholarship. In 1952, she graduated with honors and an English degree, which is amazing because at the time, less than 4% of women in the United States were college graduates, so this was quite an achievement. A classmate of hers remembered, quote, "'Jone was regular, the most normal person I ever knew. She was quiet, kind, and sincere.

I do not remember her ever criticizing anybody. She joined in with the crowd and did whatever we did, and she worked very hard as a waitress." Kind of feels like a backhanded compliment. Like, she's just very, very regular. No, I think that's, I mean, I see what you mean. It's kind of like, oh, but I think it just, you know, she was a normal girl. There was nothing.

I think that comment may be more so applies to the theories surrounding her disappearance. So actually, let's put a pin in that. That's a good thing to bring up. We'll come back to that. We'll come back to that. So Joan was also a voracious reader and loved to write. So she secured a job as a secretary for a publishing house,

which sounds really fun. And she eventually moved up to a role as an editorial assistant. Shortly after she graduated, Joan met aaman named Martin Rish at a Harvard University football game. Now Martin, who was also from Brooklyn, had attended undergrad at Colgate University and upstate New York and was receiving his MBA from Harvard when they met. When they did meet, they really hit it off. And in 1956, Joan and Martin got married and settled into the small colonial town of Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Ready to start a family right off the bat, the following year they welcomed their first child, a daughter named Lilian. Then two years after that, in 1959, they had a son named David. In April of 1961, the family moved into a two-story Cape Cod style house on Old Bedford Road in the affluent community of Lincoln, Massachusetts, which is just about 45 minutes northwest of Boston. There, Martin took a job as a director of marketing development for a paper company and the family settled into their new, wonderful life. Joan stayed home with the children, but talked about becoming a teacher when they started school.

While being the loving mother that she was known to be, Joan continued to indulge her passion for writing and read frequently as well. And encouraged by a neighbor, she joined her local chapter of the Women's League of Voters, which is basically a political nonprofit where people like Joan encourage and register others to vote. One account of her in the Lincoln paper described her as, quote, a college-educated socialite with pale eyes and a dark haircut in the style made popular by Jacqueline Kennedy.

Joan's aunt Alice called the family, quote, extremely happy. They had a beautiful home, two lovely children, and they were congenial companions, as far as I know. While Joan and Martin had yet to establish a close inner circle in Lincoln, because they're still pretty new there, she was remembered by the community as kind

and friendly, just a little reserved. On the morning of Tuesday, October 24, 1961, again not long after they moved there, Jones Husband Martin was headed out of town for a work trip. He bid farewell to Jones and the two kids early that morning and drove his car to Logan Airport in Boston to catch an 8 a.m. flight. He would stay the night in a hotel in Manhattan and return the next day so this was a quick turnaround trip. Joan filled her day with obligations for the kids as usual, and after serving them breakfast,

she brought two-year-old David across the street to the house of their neighbor, Barbara Barker, who had a son the same age as David's older sister, Lillian, who was about four. Then Joan took Lillian with her to the dentist and stopped at the store on the way home. She then picked up David from the Barker's house around 11.15am and headed back home for lunch. While she was away at the dentist and the store, both the milkman and the postman stopped by the Rishes house and reported nothing out of the ordinary. Around noon, after Joan and both her kids returned home, Joan put little David down for

his nap, which usually lasted until about 2 p.m. The across the street neighbor Barbara then brought her four-year-old son Douglas over to the Ricious House to play with Lillian for the afternoon. So it seems like, and this, I feel like, was really common back then with being neighborly, they would kind of switch back and forth. Okay, in the morning, I'm bringing my child to you so I can go out and do this and then later I'm gonna bring my child to you. You know, it's like we're switching off our kids and helping each other out. Very community oriented. Absolutely.

So the kids remember Joan working in the garden as they played because Douglas and Lillian were playing together in the Rishes yard and that she was pruning bushes with a pair of gardening shears. Around 2 p.m. so just before she should have been waking David from his nap. Joan walked Lillian and Douglas back across the street Leaving them in the Barker's yard to play on the swing set and telling them that she would be right back

2.15 p.m. is the last confirmed sighting of 31-year-old Joan Rish Barbara glanced across the street and happened to see Joan wearing what looked like a trench coat over her blue house dress and white tennis shoes, which wasn't too weird because it was a chilly autumn day outside. But Barbara noted that it seemed like she was holding something red in her arms and walking toward the garage. Obviously, it wasn't alarming in nature. She just saw her holding something red didn't know what it was.

She just figures that Jones do and her thing. Yeah, she's just kind of describing the scene. Yeah, like she didn't think this was weird until later. So a little over an hour after this at 3.40pm, Barbara took Lily and back to her house across the street, just planning on bringing her two kids, Douglas and her older son named Glen, shopping with her. So she's dropping Lillian back off at home. Like Joan had done with the children's early before, she dropped Lillian off in the front yard.

Seeing Joan's 1951 Chevrolet parked in the driveway, Barbara assumed that Joan was home, either working in the garden or tending to David inside and left Lilian in the front yard. And this really wasn't unusual because it was 1961 and they lived in a nice neighborhood. So Barbara then returned home, loaded her kids into the car, and took off on her shopping trip. About 30 minutes later, at 4.15 pm when she and the kids returned back home, she was puzzled to see four-year-old Lillian crossing the street to come see her walking by herself.

According to Barbara, when she asked Lillian what she was doing in the street alone, Lillian responded, quote, �Mommy is gone and the kitchen is covered in red paint. Allarmed by this, Barbara walked Lilian along with her two children back across the street very cautiously, entering the ritious home and calling out to Joan. Can you imagine just how terrifying, like a little four year old girl coming to you

and saying, Mommy's gone, there's red paint all over the kitchen. Like what? So, Eerie, and also Barbara is a badass. The fact that she is going to investigate and she has all these kids with her. And, you know, of course, she isn't know what's going on inside. So maybe a little dangerous to bring the kids

into that situation, but she's essentially caring for all these kids. She's immediately just has to go figure out what Lillian is talking about. Right. And when she got inside, there was no sign of Joan. The only thing Barbara could hear were David's cries to be taken out of his crib coming from the upstairs nursery. Walking into the kitchen, Barbara was shocked at the sight of what Lillian described as paint, realizing that it was actually

blood. For about 10 minutes, she hesitantly surveyed the scene with the kids, circling the house still looking for Joan. Because at this point, she doesn't know if Joan just hurt herself or if somebody else is in the house, if something like nefarious happens, she's no idea what's going on. So when she came upon David, wet and still crying in his crib, she grabbed him and a change of clothing for him, and then brought all four kids back across the street to her own home, leaving them there before calling another neighbor, Mary Jane Butler, to return

to the Rishes house to finish searching for Joan. The women quickly combed the house from head to toe, including the basement and the front and backyard. But finding nothing, they knew something was gravely wrong. And at 4.33 pm, Barbara went back across the street and called the police from her home phone. By 4.40 pm, the investigation was underway. Police spoke with the only person who may have witnessed what had happened to her four-year-old Lillian Rish, who had been in her own front yard during

the 30-minute window that something happened to her mother. By Lillian's recollection, she entered the home at 3.45pm, assuming her mother was inside, after being dropped off by Barbara. So this was an hour and a half since Joan had last been seen, holding something read by Barbara across the street. Meaning something also could have happened between that hour and a half and not the 30 minutes that Lillian was in the front yard, but so basically we have a big two-hour window of uncertainty here.

Yeah, that's definitely quite a bit of time for something to happen. Oh, yeah. So inside the house, it was quiet, and Lillian could hear her little brother David crying upstairs. Lillian had entered through the side door that led to the kitchen, which had been left unlocked, and she observed what she assumed was red paint splattered on the kitchen floor and some of the walls. Even as young as she was, she was very puzzled by the sight because her mom maintained a meticulously clean house.

So she obviously knows that, or she probably doesn't know that it's blood, but she knows that there's a mess, right? Yeah, she's just thinking there's this big mess, which is weird, because where's my mom? What is this mess? And what caused this mess? Like, it was just unusual to be there. Right. And also, actually, the family's babysitter later said, quote, Joan kept a very neat home. In the hallway that led from the kitchen to the stairs, Lillian observed a small table knocked over, as well as a trash can, a few books and magazines, and blank paper strewn

across the floor. Lillian just kind of took this all in and then ascended the stairs to the room that she shared with her baby brother, sitting with him for 30 minutes before seeing Barbara return and going to her house for help. Lincoln police reached Jones husband Martin in New York City and he left work immediately to catch a flight back to Boston only hours after he arrived. So you know, this is interesting with him that this happens on the day that he leaves for a business trip, he's only gone for one full day, and she happens to disappear this day.

It's kind of weird timing. Yeah, it's either, it feels like either if, you know, he was involved or something that he had planned something to happen while he was gone, or it just seems very convenient, like maybe somebody had been watching the house and knew that he was going to be gone or something like that and just took advantage of the opportunity exactly but both of those situations seem very plausible and the police feel the same way as well they're like is one of these situations true so a we have to contact Martin just to let him know what's going on and b we got to talk to him and see what he knows if he knows anything at all yeah and as that was

happening police surveyed this very startling scene and found a wealth of clues, but no indications as to what had actually happened to Joan. Like strangely, the handset of the phone had been ripped from the wall and tossed into the trash. Like, why would that happen? And from the phone, police were able to lift a fingerprint, but because Joan herself had never had her fingerprints taken, they were unable to cross-reference and confirm whether it was hers or not at the time, but I will get

back to that. EARLY, in addition to the blood spilled on the floor, there were smears on the walls, appearing as if someone had been trying to steady themselves as they floor. There were smears on the walls, appearing as if someone had been trying to steady themselves as they stumbled. There were also streaks in the blood that looked as though someone tried to clean it up, and a role of paper tells, as well as a pair of David's overalls, that appeared to have been used to haphazardly mop up some of the mess. So that's really weird, like why would Joan try to clean up her own mess

and then not finish? Like if she was hurt, it's like, I'll clean this up later. I have more important things to tend to, like my injuries. But then there's also, if somebody else hurt her, why would they only partially try to clean it up and using a child's overalls as like a mop?

Yeah. And then not finish? Yeah, I really don't think that she's gonna use David's overalls to clean up blood on the floor, but you know, what's more suspicious to me is the fact that the headset of the phone is thrown in the garbage can. Because that to me says that somebody was probably trying

to stop Joan from making a call for help. Yeah, like this is a full scene of a struggle. Something happened here. Yeah, there's a mess going on. Like why, and that's a call for help. Yeah, like this is a full scene of a struggle. Something happened here. Yeah, there's a mess going on. Like why, and that's a good question too, like why would she throw her own phone into the trash? It's just so weird, but on top of that, the phone book was open to a page

where emergency numbers could be written down, but the page was left blank. So then it kind of makes you wonder was she trying to make a call and Emergency call like you're saying and was stopped. But what's weird is that you know that that page is completely empty So maybe she was thinking oh Like I need to go and find these emergency numbers and then she gets to that that page and there's nothing there. Right. And for those who don't know, 9-1-1 actually came into effect in 1968, so seven years after this.

And before 9-1-1, you had to dial a local seven digit number to reach the police or the fire department. So it's not like today where it's like, oh, we all know how to reach emergency services back then. You had to have a whole number memorized. And and remember they had just moved to that area. So whatever the local emergency number was, they wouldn't have known it by heart yet because they were brand new to that, that town. That's a really good point. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so that could explain this part of it that maybe they hadn't written the number down yet and she was hoping it was there and needed help. It's really, really crazy to think about. Yeah, I think she was probably hoping that maybe Martin had written it down in that book. But sadly, she turned to the page and there was nothing there. Right. Or so we believe. So discarded in the trash was an empty liquor bottle, which Martin confirmed that he and Joan had consumed together. But there were also multiple empty beer bottles, which Martin could that he and Joan had consumed together. But there were also multiple empty beer bottles, which Martin could not account for.

So that kind of makes you wonder, did she drink that beer? Did somebody else drink it? Where did this beer come from? Especially because he left before 8 a.m. That morning, let's say he left at like 6 a.m. and this all was occurring at 3.4 p.m. So did she drink multiple beers that day in the morning

and early afternoon? I don't know. So in the driveway, Jones 1951 Chevrolet sat untouched, but a blood stain marked the middle of the trunk. There was also a small blood stain on the door handle of her car, and her coat and wallet had been left behind. The mailbox was still full from the postman's delivery that morning, meaning Joan had never checked the mail.

Though police initially hypothesized that Joan had taken her own life, they were stumped as to why her body couldn't be recovered. And the amount of blood that was left behind wasn't quite so much that it would have prohibited her from being able to leave because they reportedly recovered about a pint of blood, which is actually how much you donate when you give blood, so certainly not a fatal loss. And to put that into a little more perspective, people typically die, though obviously size of the person matters, when they lose half to two-thirds

of their blood, which is kind of a lot. And for the average person is around five to six pints. And that obviously doesn't account for other injuries, of course, but either way, the wound that Joan supposedly would have sustained required medical attention and she was clearly in need of help. At Public Mobile, we do things differently. From our subscription phone plans to throwing a big sale right now when no one else is.

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they were not able to apprehend her, multiple people that were questioned claimed to have seen Joan on that day. So at 2.45pm, about an hour before Lillian was dropped off back at home, and 30 minutes after Barbara last saw Joan. A woman was spotted along the side of the road walking hunched over and sporting a coat, remember Barbara said that she was wearing a trench, but also wouldn't be uncommon for anybody to wear one in autumn. But this woman was seen trudging along Route 2A just minutes past Joan Rish's house moving in the opposite direction of the house. The woman was described by motorists as in her early 30s, and Joan was 31, and unkempt in appearance.

Then, between 315 and 330, a woman fitting a similar description was spotted walking along Route 128 in Wal-Fam, Massachusetts. Now, Wal-Fam is about six miles or nine kilometer southeast of Lincoln, inching towards Boston, and it would take about two hours on foot,

so this was definitely too far to walk in the hour since she had been seen by Barbara. But if she had been transported partway in a car, it's definitely feasible that she could have popped up there. Witnesses who documented this apparent sighting described a woman in her early 30s wearing a large coat, walking heavily with her head down.

But the most eerie detail is that everybody described that this woman was bleeding. Witnesses were called a steady stream of blood coming down both legs and claim that she was clutching her stomach as if she was in pain or holding something. And like the first alleged sighting, she was remembered as unkempt and untidy, whatever that means exactly. And later, around 4.25pm, so about an hour after the bleeding woman was seen, another sighting was reported, believed to have been the same person and possibly Joan. Still walking along Route 128, the woman was reported to have streaks of mud on her, although that may have been dried up blood if this was, in fact, the same woman.

She was walking with her head hung low and her hands in her pockets, and although multiple sources came forward with these accounts after Joan's disappearance, no one stopped to question or help the woman despite her appearance of being in great distress. Which is really sad that all these people are driving past this woman who is literally bleeding down her legs and looking like she's in pain and nobody's helping her. What? Yeah, that seems kind of strange, especially because it was, you know, 1961,

and I feel like people... This is a nice area. Yeah, and people were more like neighborly and communal back then, and maybe would have stopped back then, but it's kind of weird that nobody did. Yeah, so I don't know. So disturbing. So obviously the theory of an intruder

loomed large over this small community. You know, the suspicious circumstances that were compounded with the fact that they did not recover a body and that there were potential sightings of her outside of her hometown convinced many people that she had been attacked, abducted, and discarded alongside the road or somewhere else. Some, including Martin Rich himself, again her husband, believe that she was suffering from amnesia

as a result of her injuries and that she was somewhere in the Boston area, just waiting to be found. And in my research, amnesia can't come from blood loss alone, but a lot of people just think that maybe and Martin himself just think that maybe she had suffered or sustained like a head injury,

and that this caused the amnesia, and maybe she was injured in other ways that were causing her to bleed, and possibly bleed down her legs, like these sightings. And you know, this comes up a lot in cases that we cover where people go missing. A lot of people speculate that if you're injured, you can get amnesia, and then obviously people speculate that if you're injured, you can

get amnesia and then obviously if you have amnesia, you don't know who you are or where you live, etc. and then maybe you become homeless and nobody knows that you're actually a missing person who just sustained a terrible injury and that your family is looking for you. But to me, I don't know, I don't really lean on this theory myself, but as investigators spoke to more neighbors and potential eyewitnesses, a suspicious detail came to light. An unrecognized car had apparently been spotted in Jones' driveway shortly before her disappearance. So a 13-year-old girl named Virginia Keen remembered walking by the rich house that afternoon and seeing an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway next to Joan Chevrolet.

Virginia claimed that it was a gray or gray blue colored car that resembled a 1954 Plymouth with Massachusetts plates. She claimed that the car was dirty and it had a sloped back. And interestingly, this car did not belong to Martin nor did it belong to Joan. So assuming this 13 year old neighbor didn't make this up, I don't know why she would, this is a really interesting aspect of the story. Especially because at 3.40 pm, so just before Lillian was dropped back off at home by Barbara, another neighbor, named Hilda Ziegler, was driving down Old Bedford Road past the rich house and believes

that she stopped to let the great car pull out of the driveway in front of her, but she didn't observe who the occupants of the car were because obviously she didn't think it was suspicious. It's just a car coming out of a driveway, but then later of course, she's remembering that this happened at Jones House. So we have this and then 13 year old Virginia's, citing, and they both said there were great cars in the driveway that afternoon. So whose car was this and who was driving it?

Everyone in the vicinity that day was questioned regarding their possible involvement, including Martin, of course, and the family's milkman, postman and dry cleaner, all of whom had visited the house that day to make deliveries. And all of these men were cleared of involvement. And none of them had this gray car that was described. Now, this case was so confounding that the FBI became involved quite quickly.

At the time they announced to the press that they did not yet believe that she had been murdered, but in the 62 years since the disappearance occurred, there have been such a plethora of theories that almost anything seems like a viable possibility. Police questioned whether she had vanished of her own volition, obviously, and wondered if the bizarre and bloody crime scene was staged to throw off investigators. But her college friend, Sobra Martin, argued, quote, I think Joan is almost certainly dead. She would never have left her family. Another friend agreed, saying, quote, I know they were happy.

That girl lived for nothing but her home, husband, and children. And this is where we could take that pin out of what we were talking about earlier, Heath, is I think that was just, you know, them saying she was normal. Like she wouldn't, she wouldn't stage something like this. She wouldn't conjure up something so wild. She was just a normal gal.

Yeah, she was, you know, essentially a typical housewife. Yeah. She was a mother raising her children. She just loved to read and be with her kids and be with her husband allegedly, you know, as far as we know. But leaning into her hobby of loving reading and a little bit more on this theory.

So in 1963, a local reporter stumbled on a discovery in the Lincoln Public Library that kind of gave credence to this idea, or the idea that she left over on volition and that she stayed trone disappearance. In the aftermath of Jones' disappearance, Serene Gerson, who was a reporter for the local paper, was browsing a book when she came across Jones' signature and noticed that Jones herself had signed it and checked it out shortly before she went missing. Thinking she may be on to something, Serene searched the catalog from top to bottom and found about 25 books.

Most of them related to murder and missing persons that Joan had checked out over the summer leading up to the day she vanished. So either she was really just getting into true crime or maybe possibly she was conjuring something up. Well, also we're thinking here, she loves to read her family and friends know of this, but here's the thing, Heath.

The topics of the books that she was reading led some to believe that she was capable of making herself disappear and then construing the scene to appear as if it was an accident because get this. The plot of one book eerily mirrored what happened to her. The book featured a woman who disappeared under similarly suspicious circumstances, leaving blood and towels in her wake. But in the story, the character had staged the crime scene to look like an abduction in murder, leading this reporter to hatch the same theory about the disappearance of Joan Rich. This is so interesting to me.

Like, I think this is probably the weirdest part of this story is the fact that that story was so spot on to what, you know, may have occurred with Joan. Yeah, and a lot of the other books she read, like it just seemed, it just seemed really, really suspicious that this was one of the last books that she was known to read. So, Serene kind of came up with this idea

that maybe Joan grew tired of this cookie cutter, suburban family life that she was known to read. So Serine kind of came up with this idea that maybe Joan grew tired of this cookie-cutter suburban family life that she had been living and just missed the days where she lived in the city and worked for a publisher. This or maybe she had suffered a break from reality, but she had no history of mental illness and neither did anyone in her family. So this is really tough because she did love to read to it could be a total coincidence that This is the topic of books that she was reading leading up to her going missing But it's definitely odd that the main consensus across the books was mostly people staging their own

Disappearances. Yeah, very interesting. I wonder if there was any other books kind of among those 25 Well, it wasn't it wasn't all like strictly how to go missing. Sure. But there were 25 books that were about murders and disappearances. So that's what I mean, why it's difficult because, well, I read books like that. The only books I read are thrillers and mysteries. So I don't want to stage my own disappearance, but I think because some of them did particularly this one that seemed very similar to what happened to Joan, it just think because some of them did, particularly this one that seemed very

similar to what happened to Joan, it just felt like kind of too weird to be a coincidence. Yeah, was this like a Gone Girl situation? That's so weird you say that because a lot of people say that this case is like Gone Girl, especially because in that book and in the movie she tries to, you know, she makes it look like the crime scene was cleaned up and a lot of the elements are really similar and then of course you know i want spoil i for anybody who has a rather the book or seen the movie but

those who know no yeah and if you haven't go do it because it's amazing so absolutely so while this was a very taboo topic of you know conversation at this time in the years following her disappearance, people started to speculate that Joan may have suffered a botched in-home abortion. Which would explain the blood running down her legs, I guess. Exactly.

So in 1961, abortion was still illegal in the United States, barring extreme circumstances. Now, of course, this is purely speculation, but there are details to support this possibility. Like Keith said, you know, if this woman spotted bleeding alongside the road was Joan, the blood running down her legs and the clutching of her stomach kinda supports this hypothesis. But it's unclear where she would have been going. Like if she needed medical attention, it seems more likely that she would have walked to the nearest hospital instead of walking all the way to a different town or that she would have just sought the help of a friend or a neighbor.

Like why not go across the street to Good ol' Barbara? She's there, she's home. Yeah, and she could have just put you in the car and drove you to the hospital. Right, which just makes you wonder if that woman walking was Joan and if Joan walked from her house to that location and kept going Why she didn't stop earlier which kind of makes you wonder? Maybe that's not what happened But with sentiment against abortion as strong as it was back then especially for a woman of Joan's social standing It's absolutely possible that she didn't want to seek the help

It's absolutely possible that she didn't want to seek the help from somebody that she knew or the hospital out of fear or shame. And maybe she was even attempting to make her way to a discreet designated doctor for assistance, but wound up getting hurt or passing out due to blood loss along the way. But if that's true, then where is she? The unexplained beer bottles in the family's trash can can also kind of support this theory because it's possible that she was using beer as an ad hoc anesthesia, or if the mysterious car in her driveway was the doctor who performed the abortion, it's entirely possible that Joan was suffering excessive bleeding and panicked, and the mess in the kitchen was the result of a scuffle when Joan wanted to call for help. That would also explain the phone book, and the handset being ripped from the wall. And then after this, maybe the doctor, like put Joan in his car and took off, and she

was able to escape for a bit, or he left to avoid implication and she set off on foot to seek help. And actually, police felt that the blood they found was not due to an injury, but instead could have been menstrual blood, but this has not been proven or disproven. And it's really interesting that police have that theory as well that the blood didn't come from a cut or anything else that possibly, you know, like you said,

it was menstrual blood, but it's so hard for me because this just feels like it feels so speculative because it's like it is. Yeah, people saw blood running down her legs, but hey, was that from her stomach? Was it true? Was it from her dress? Sure, was it from something else? Like, you know, it's like you see something like that and then on, you know, obviously your brain starts turning and you're like, oh, is it because of this or this or this or this, but it's possible that we don't even know where that blood was coming from, you know, on June.

Absolutely, and I mean, I think if this was like a mystery novel, I think that this would be a very viable conclusion. Like to me, this theory makes a ton of sense, but obviously there's no actual evidence to support it. It just feels like, oh, that checks all the boxes of all the weird things in the story. Like it just does. Yeah, like you can sort of piece together a story

based on the little things, you know, the little details that are within the story. Yeah, and this feels like a good one. But her husband, Martin, said that he thought this theory was just absolutely ridiculous. And he claimed that they weren't planning for another child, but if they, you know, if she became pregnant, they would have welcomed another baby. They were financially stable enough to support another baby so but i also think he would probably know if his wife was pregnant unless she was

also to hit it i mean sure yeah but for how long well that's the thing is we did if she will even was pregnant out far along with you like who the hell knows so true but um... but of course you know i will say that it would make sense for especially because abortion was as illegal as it was, it would make sense for Martin to be like, no, my wife would never have an abortion. And it's like, she absolutely could have, or she absolutely could have wanted to. Sure, she has her own mind.

It could be exactly, it could be a kind of situation where, oh, maybe you don't want to believe that that could have happened, but it could have, of course, I don't know, Jones, so you don't want to believe that could have happened, but it could have. Of course, I don't know Joan, so I don't know if that's something. I don't know how she felt about abortion, but it is technically possible. But he didn't believe in this. So some people started to speculate and wonder if Joan was, you know, maybe having an affair with somebody and she didn't want to follow through with the pregnancy because the baby was not Martens. But again, there was no evidence that she had ever or would ever cheat on her husband, and both Marten and her friends and family claimed that it would be completely out of

character for her to do so. But also, as some of you guys might be like shouting in your cars or in your heads or to yourselves like, she could have absolutely suffered a miscarriage, maybe not even knowing that she was pregnant. So that could have been what occurred as well. Another possibility. Another possibility amongst many. But as time lapsed without any sign of Joan, it became more and more believable that her disappearance was actually due to a murder.

But there was a big lack of suspects to support this theory, like Joan didn't seem to be living a double life or embroiled in any sort of secretive or high-risk behavior. She just lived a very quiet life in Lincoln. But if we are to believe that the accounts of neighbors Virginia and Hilda who witnessed the car, this idea becomes very possible. Now, the car has been reported to more likely have been an unmarked police cruiser and the accounts from Virginia and Hilda

probably confused the time in which they spotted it. Yeah, so they probably just got the timing wrong. Maybe it was when police were at the house, you know, like looking for Joan. Yeah, like this could have been after she was reported missing and somebody reported at the house, like looking for Joan. Yeah, like this could have been after she was reported missing and somebody reported to the house. So that's the hard time is it's not like,

oh, we have cell phones. I mean, people had watches, of course, but. It's not like I can take a photo that's timestamped. Exactly, or like I know for a fact, this happened at 2 p.m. because that's when I got home or that's when I was leaving for an appointment, that was at 2.15.

You know, it was just kind of like, I was walking by and I was driving by and I saw this and I think it was around this time. So I think that this siding is very, very interesting to the story, as I said earlier, but it's not, we don't have a definite time stamp, so it's absolutely possible it could have just been the police. And the idea of this being just an unknown intruder is also kind of off the table and less likely because nothing was stolen and again nobody saw anything suspicious. But we also have to remember that somehow Joan got away from her house and went up the street

and nobody saw that either. Like she didn't just teleport out of the house. But there was one person actually in Lincoln who kind of raised eyebrows of having possibly been involved in this, and that was a guy named Robert Foster who was an agent for the National Park Service. So the richest property on Old Bedford Road was earmarked for a historical park, and the National Park Service was reportedly just jonesing for this land, hoping to raise the house and incorporate it into their plans. So Robert was questioned and admitted that he and Joan had spoken previously, and that

he was trying to apply her to sell the house, but that he would have never done anything to actually endanger her. But because other people reported later that they felt very pressured and uncomfortable in Robert's presence, this kind of brought this idea that maybe he had, you know, motive to kill her and get the family to move out of the area. So now for the simplest but potentially most plausible theory, this is the theory that Joan hurt herself while working in the yard of the garden, perhaps even with the shears that Barbara saw her holding earlier. When she spotted Joan across the street at 2.15pm, the last confirmed sighting of Joan.

Barbara recalled seeing that she was holding something red, and walking with her arms out stretched as if chasing after someone or struggling with something physically. And Barbara actually assumed that she had gotten David up from his nap and was chasing after him. So if you believe this theory that she had cut herself and it was all an accident, you could assume that maybe she panicked and that could explain why the blood was splattered both outside and inside the house, why the scene had been hastily cleaned up, and why the phone had been wrenchily cleaned up, and why the phone

had been wrenched from the wall. Like maybe in a panic, she took off her help, her medical attention, and in a days, she fell to her final resting place. But again, if this is what happened, where was this and how come her body has never been found. Like these questions just make it very hard for me to believe that this was all just an accident and no one else is involved. Especially because remember I talked about that fingerprint

that was lifted off the phone that had been torn off the wall. Well, it was eventually found not to belong to Joan Nor Martin. So this mixed with the possibility that maybe that gray car was not the police, could somebody for whatever reason have come by the house that maybe knew Joan and obviously taken a risk by the way by having their car in the driveway during broad daylight, but could somebody have come to the house maybe something happened maybe it wasn't even intended to

happen. And Joan got hurt and then they had to cover it up. Maybe she got away for a while and that's why she was seeing walking down the road. And then she was picked up and that's why we've never found her body. I'm really interested to know if there was possibly any footprints in the blood that they could have, you know, matched to a size shoe or something. I don't think so. And that, yeah, you know, it's size shoe or something. I don't think so. And that, yeah, you know, it's just like,

the problem with this case is that there's really just not any physical evidence. Well, I think you'll be interested in this theory heath. This is like one explanation for the accident theory, in my opinion, this is the only thing that could really make sense. So near the family's home and along where she was reportedly last seen walking on Route 128, this area was undergoing construction. This part of the highway was undergoing construction.

And this has never been proven, but it's absolutely believable and possible that maybe light-headed from blood loss and her injuries from whatever the heck happened to her, she fell into a pit or a construction area, and then maybe she was concealed by the road work, and later sealed there indefinitely as the construction concluded. That's very Brian Schaefer asking to me. I knew you didn't say that. I was gonna bring that up.

I literally almost just said, this tie, this is, you know, also talked about one of your favorite cases. Yeah. Brian Schaefer, which we also covered, that is truly one of the craziest stories ever. But it is very possible, you know, if there was construction going on, you know, people really don't think about that, that sometimes accidents happen. There was a case where a worker who worked for a grocery store was up on the roof and fell between these two vents and got stuck and couldn't get out and ended up dying there

and wasn't found out and ended up dying there and wasn't found for like 10 years. But people were like, you know, what happened to this guy? There was all these theories and then they finally found the body. So it's very, very possible. And if that was the case, you would never be able to find Jones' body. No, and it does, like you're saying, it does happen and this has come up across just different cases that you and I have discussed on the show So it's this to me is a very interesting

Interesting little piece so the town of Lincoln offered a $500 reward for information regarding Jones disappearance And the Boston record American newspaper offered $5,000 which is equivalent to over $51,000 today. But tragically, years passed with no sign of Joan Rish. Martin was very staunch in his belief that she was coming home, so he refused to remarry or move from the house that they shared together. And he lived at their residence on Old Bedford Road until 1975, so 14 years later, when the National Park Service was finally able to secure the house, turning it into Minuteman National Historical Park.

The house itself was relocated to Lexington, Massachusetts, but Martin purchased a new home in the area just wanting to stay close for Joan. And he also maintained their old phone number in case she ever called. Martin died in 2009 at the age of 79, and his obituary claims that he, quote, had a difficult and good life. And actually, the last of the original investigators on the case passed away that same year. Joan Rish was about 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed about 110 pounds.

She had short brown hair and blue eyes and was believed to be wearing a blue house dress, blue and white tennis shoes and a grey coat on the day that she went missing. She was wearing her wedding ring at the time which was a platinum band with five diamond chips. If she were alive today, she would be 93 years old. If you have any information about the disappearance of Joan Rich, please call the Lincoln Police at 781-259-8113. 1, 2, 5, 9, 8, 1, 1, 3. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and on Friday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into.

Thank you, Heath, for sticking it out and making the comments that you did. Sorry, guys, I couldn't do more today. Just been feeling really inflamed, but on Friday, I will be back, and be back in action to call more people, pieces of shit. God, love it, God, love it. Actually, Friday, we have a really interesting case

coming for you guys. Please make sure that you follow us on socials, especially if you want to see photos from this case and every other case we cover. And if you want to talk to us and others about this story and the others that we cover, I mean this case is so crazy. It's a really difficult case because so much of the theories just lie in speculation, but truly a baffling and mysterious story. So thank you guys so much for tuning in,

and we'll see you in a few days. All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5%

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