Murder: True Crime Stories - UNSOLVED: The Joan Risch Case 2, Abduction or Escape?

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

In the aftermath of Joan Risch’s sudden disappearance, investigators were left staring at a scene filled with unsettling clues. Blood on the kitchen floor. A phone torn from the wall. Two young children alone in the house. In Part 2, Murder: True Crime Stories examines how police processed the evidence and why the case quickly split into competing theories. Detectives traced blood types, followed reports of a woman seen walking along a nearby road, and scrutinized Joan’s recent interest in crime and disappearance stories. Was she the victim of a violent abduction, or had she carefully staged her own vanishing? As leads faded and the years passed, Joan’s disappearance became one of New England’s most enduring mysteries, leaving investigators and her family still searching for answers. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Carter. If you're enjoying murder, true crime stories, there's a new crime house show for you to check out. It's called The Final Hours hosted by Sarah Turney and Courtney Nicole. Sarah is an advocate for missing and murdered victims whose own sister disappeared in 2001. And Courtney is a true crime storyteller who has seen firsthand how crime can change a family forever. Together, they bring lived experience to every case, examining the moment. moments just before a person disappears, the routines, the timelines, the small details that often get overlooked, because every disappearance has a moment where everything still feels normal until it doesn't. Listen to and follow the final hours on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes drop every Monday. This is Crime House. When something doesn't make sense, we try to give it meaning, even if those explanations raise more questions than answers. When 31-year-old Joan Rish disappeared in the fall of 1961, there wasn't much to hold on to. There was a disturbing crime scene inside her home, a handful of uncertain eyewitness accounts, and almost no physical evidence that led to Joan or her possible captive. Then a reporter uncovered a detail that changed the course of the investigation. Joan loved mystery novels, and before she went missing,

she checked out several books that seemed to mirror her own disappearance, and from that small fact, a whole new theory took shape. Maybe Joan hadn't been abducted or killed at all. Maybe she had vanished on purpose. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon,

and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every day. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review, and follow the show, and for early, add free access to every episode, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. This is the second of two episodes on the disappearance of 31-year-old Joan Rish in October,

1961, she vanished from her home in the Boston suburbs, seemingly without a trace. Last time, I traced Joan's life leading up to her disappearance. Though her childhood was marked by sudden loss, her marriage and growing families seemed to heal some of those wounds. But when a neighbor discovered the strange, unsettling scene inside Jones' home on October 24th, those assumptions were called into question. Today, I'll walk through the initial investigation and the many theories that took hold, and maybe Joan was kidnapped, had hurt herself or experienced a bout of sudden amnesia, or maybe, just maybe, she chose to disappear and start a new life. The idea seemed far-fetched

to a lot of people, but as decades passed and the case went cold, it was a lot of people. It was a begin to feel like a real possibility. All that and more coming up. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do.

Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin. Today, we'd love to talk business. On October 24, 1961, 31-year-old Joan Rish disappeared from her home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Her daughter, 4-year-old Lillian, was the first to discover she was missing. As soon as Lillian saw the neighbors were back home, she ran across the street to Barbara Barker. Lillian was good friends with Barbara's son, and Barbara often watched the

little girl when Joan needed a hand. The first thing Lillian told Barbara was that her mom was gone and their kitchen was covered in red paint. After hearing that, Barbara rushed over to the Rish house. As soon as she stepped inside, she realized it wasn't paint all over the kitchen. It was blood. At that point, Barbara knew something was very wrong. She frantically searched the house for Joan, but like Lillian said, her mom was missing. The only person still there was Joan's other child, her two-year-old son, David, who was crying in his room. Barbara followed a trail of blood all the way upstairs. It led to David's crib. Barbara picked him up and realized his diaper was soiled. She couldn't imagine a world where Joan would leave her baby behind. The only explanation Barbara could

think of was that someone had forced Joan out of the house, which meant time was of the essence. At 4.33 p.m., about 15 minutes after Lillian had run across the street, Barbara called the authorities. Massachusetts patrolman Michael McHugh arrived at the Rish's house five minutes later at 4.38 p.m. He'd heard Barbara's report, so he walked right through the side door, which opened. opened up to the kitchen. The place was a mess. It was covered in blood, including smears on the walls. The table had been flipped over. The phone receiver had been ripped from the wall and tossed into a trash can, which now sat in the middle of the room instead of under the sink where it belonged. McHugh's first thought was that they were dealing with a suicide attempt.

But he needed a lot more information before he could say anything for certain. McHugh searched the house but found no one. So he headed outside and walked the perimeter of the property, keeping an eye out for any sign of Joan, but again he came up empty. He gazed at the woods surrounding the house. He worried that Joan was out there, injured and possibly disoriented. But he knew he couldn't search the forest alone.

He called for backup. This was going to be a job for the whole department. More officers arrived on scene, along with police chief Leo Algeo. After talking to McHugh, Chief Algeo sent officers out into the woods to look for Joan. He also ordered a search of the local hospitals in case she'd been admitted somewhere. While his men searched for Joan, Algeo took Barbara's official statement. She described her afternoon in detail and explained how she'd last seen Joan. Joan standing in her driveway around 2.15 p.m.

Then she told him everything she'd noticed when she first walked into the Rish's house. She also spoke to Joan's character. She told Algeo that Joan was level-headed and faithful. We don't know whether Algeo asked if Joan was having an affair, or Barbara offered up that information unprompted, but Barbara made it clear that as far as she knew, Joan wasn't involved in anything remotely scandalous. Algeo noted it all down, but it would need to be corroborated.

He couldn't take one housewife's word for it. Inside the Rish's house, officers took another sweep of the property. They found more blood. On the wall near where the phone receiver had been, on the door frame between the kitchen and dining room, and on the phone itself. Almost all of the blood had dried except for a few pooled spots on the floor.

There were a few other clues too. The first was the phone directory. Someone had flipped through the yellow pages. The book was open to the section where you can list helpful emergency numbers, except in this case, no numbers had been written down. The page was blank.

Officers weren't sure what that meant, but it felt like something. Scanning the kitchen, they noticed some empty beer bottles in the trash can, along with the phone receiver that had been thrown inside. There were also lots of bloody paper towels and a pair of children's overalls. Those were covered in blood too and looked like they'd been used to clean up. But Jones' trench coat was still in. the house, untouched, along with her pocketbook full of cash. So it didn't seem like this was a robbery gone wrong or that Joan had planned to leave. In addition to the trail of blood leading from the

kitchen to David's crib, there was also a trail from the kitchen to Joan's car, which was still in the driveway. Police found a few droplets of blood on the trunk. The other detail police noticed was four unopened letters in the mailbox. That wasn't necessarily suspicious, but the officers wrote it down anyway. After combing through the house, it seemed like the authorities had a lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete.

As for the search of the woods, that was less helpful. Officers scanned the entire forest surrounding the Rish property and even used bloodhounds to try to pick up a scent, but if Joan had been there, she was long gone. For the Massachusetts police, this seemed to rule out the idea that Joan had attempted to die by suicide. If she had, they either would have found her body in the house or the woods, or at the very least, they would have seen more blood that indicated she had tried to run for help after her attempt was unsuccessful. So they turned back to the evidence they did have, namely the blood in the kitchen.

Investigators were able to lift some fingerprints from the wall and sent them off to state police chemists for analysis. And they also planned to send blood samples to forensics. DNA testing wasn't available at the time, so they were looking at the blood type, and they wanted to see if the blood in the kitchen was a match for Joan. who was type O. But they didn't need a lab to tell them what they could see with their own eyes. Although it looked like there was a lot of blood in the kitchen, that was probably just because it had been smeared everywhere.

In reality, they estimated it was only about half a pint total. Well, that's just one U.S. cup and less than the size of a standard can of soda. Based on all that, the authorities thought, John had suffered a superficial wound, one that wasn't serious enough to cause death. That meant there was a strong possibility Joan was still alive. But to find her, they would need to expand their search, starting with Joan's husband, Martin. After 31-year-old Joan Rish went missing from her home on October 24, 1961, detectives

believed they were dealing with a possible suicide. But after scouring the area and not seeing any sign of Joan, they knew they had something else on their hands, maybe a kidnapping or worse. Joan's husband, 32-year-old Martin, had been in New York City on a one-night business trip when she disappeared. Now the Massachusetts police were eager to speak with him. After finishing their initial investigation, they called Martin at around 11. 11 p.m. They broke the news and asked him to come back to Lincoln immediately. Martin got on the first flight home. When he landed, he went straight to the police station and gave his statement. Martin walked the investigators through his day. He left home at 6.50 a.m. and drove to Logan

Airport in Boston, then flew to New York. He detailed his time in the city, including all the phone calls he made in the name of the hotel where he planned to stay before the police had called him. When asked to describe Joan, Martin said she could be shy and a little introverted. Sometimes she got so nervous that she would break out in a rash on her neck. He told police that the only extracurricular activity she participated in, aside from reading her mystery novels, was volunteering with the Women's League of Voters. Her daily routine was pretty consistent. and rarely changed, and she never would have left the children alone.

But there was one thing that might be worth looking into. Joan was way too nice to traveling salesman. Martin said he often bought into whatever they were selling. He wondered if maybe something had gone wrong with one of them. Officers said they would look into it. Then they asked him some questions of their own. First, they ran through the contents of the garbage can they found in the kitchen. Martin could account for everything except the beer bottles.

He said he and Joan hadn't drunk those. They also asked if she wore any expensive jewelry. He said the only thing she consistently wore was her wedding ring, a narrow platinum band with five diamond chips. The officers wrote it all down, and told Martin they'd be in touch if they had any further questions. Detectives quickly confirmed that Martin was in New York, like he'd said. For police, this meant he couldn't have been involved in Jones' disappearance,

and he was ruled out as a possible suspect. Thankfully, authorities had other leads. While detectives had spoken with Martin, other officers had interviewed the Rish's neighbors. They managed to put together a rough timeline filled with possible sightings of Joan and an unknown stranger in a blue car. At approximately 2.45 p.m. someone said they saw Joan or someone who looked like her walking along Route 2A. That was the two-lane highway near Jones home. Reportedly, she had a scarf wrapped around her head and seemed.

confused. Half an hour later at 3.15 p.m., a neighborhood kid was getting off the school bus when she saw a car that she didn't recognize backing out of the Rish's driveway, or maybe the Barker's driveway across the street. The girl wasn't sure. All she knew was the car was blue, and she'd never seen it before. Between 3.15 and 3.30 p.m., there were two more sightings of a woman who matched Jones' description now on Route 128, just off Route 2A. Both eyewitnesses said they saw blood running down the woman's legs and that she was clutching her stomach. An hour later, at 4.25 p.m., one more person spotted a woman walking along Route 128. They said they saw brownish-colored mud on her legs. If the previous sightings were correct, it might have

actually been dried blood. Five minutes later, at 4.30 p.m., another Lincoln resident said she saw an unfamiliar blue car parked on the side of a road, who was next to the woods, not far from the Rish's house. A man she didn't recognize got out, cut a tree branch, then got back in side with the branch and drove off. At the same time, someone saw a woman wandering on Trapello Road just off Route 128, where there'd been earlier sightings. The woman seemed disoriented and confused. And yet, despite all of these sightings of a woman in obvious distress,

no one stopped to help her. But at least the Massachusetts police now, knew where to look. The authority's next step was to search for that blue car and its driver. They believed the man behind the wheel was the one who attacked Joan and likely drove off with her. Then she either escaped or he let her go, leaving her stumbling along the side of the road. After talking to the two witnesses who had seen the car, an adult neighbor and the schoolgirl,

and they believe the vehicle was either a 1950. or 1955 Oldsmobile. Unfortunately, what seemed like such a promising clue led nowhere. Police followed several leads, but they all quickly dried up. It seemed like the car and the driver had vanished just as quickly as Joan. With that, the authorities turned back to the evidence they'd collected from the crime scene. Forensic experts determine the blood was the same type as Jones. They didn't have the technology to glean anything more than that, meaning

they couldn't definitively say it was hers, just that the blood type in the room was type O, and Joan also had type O blood. However, forensics did show the fingerprints were not hers. They had no idea whose they were, but police had found old hospital records with Jones prints, and they weren't a match for the ones in the kitchen. At that point, the authorities had two working theories. Either Joan had been kidnapped and possibly murdered, or she had hurt herself in some way, then wandered off from her home disoriented. Both scenarios raised questions without answers. The Massachusetts police had called in the FBI for assistance, but even those agents weren't sure, if the amount of blood found in the kitchen was enough to indicate a murder.

Still, the fact that there were unknown prints seemed to point to foul play, and the only way to know what had gone on in that kitchen was to either find Joan or find her body. After two weeks, without any new developments, police sent divers out to search the Cambridge Reservoir along Route 128. The reported Joan sightings had been nearby, and it was possible that she'd fallen in, or maybe someone had thrown her in. On November 4th, about 50 divers searched the three-mile shoreline. They all came back to search again on Sunday.

They found nothing. By then, detectives had already started digging into Jones' past. They wanted to see if her disappearance had anything to do with her personal life. They'd visited her old friends and family in New York, then they went to New Jersey where she'd spent some of her childhood, then to Ridgefield, Connecticut, where she and Martin had lived before moving to Lincoln. Again, nothing really came up.

They notified departments in other states and contacted any relatives they could find, from New York to Florida to California, but none of them had seen or heard from Joan. The FBI continued to help the Massachusetts state police however they could, but their hands were tied. There was no proof that Joan had crossed state lines, so there was no potential federal violation, which meant all they could do was advised the state police. As November came and went, the case grew cold.

It seemed like the Massachusetts police would never learn what had happened. happened in that kitchen until eventually an unlikely source came forward with a tip that changed everything if you haven't listened to murder with my husband yet you're missing out do you ever want to unload on your friend or significant other about true crime but they're not about it well every week true crime obsessed wife payton discusses a new case with her husband garrett who can't stand this with true crime. Together, they cover one detailed true crime story, but with two wildly different reactions. She loves it and he hates it. With over 50 million downloads and over 2 million followers on social media, this is a podcast that has something for everyone. So if you're a true

crime lover, tune in to murder with my husband and try to convince the true crime hater in your life to listen with you. You can listen to murder with my husband now on Apple Podcasts or any where you listen to your podcasts or watch on YouTube. By December, 1961, 31-year-old Joan Rish had been missing for over a month. She was last seen on October 24th when her friend Barbara Barker noticed Joan standing in her driveway. By the time Barbara went to check on Joan at 4.30 p.m., she was gone. Detectives had spent weeks searching for Joan, but didn't seem any closer to locating her, and they still weren't sure what had led to her disappearance. But there were several theories.

The first was the Gone Girl theory. It wasn't called that at the time, considering this case happened five decades before Gillian Flynn wrote the best-selling novel, or David Fincher made it into a movie. But here's the idea. According to some of Jones' friends, she had only been pretending to embrace motherhood

and her role as a homemaker. In reality, she regretted leaving behind her career in publishing. They didn't think she was happy and maybe it went beyond that. Maybe she was a little resentful that her husband got to keep working while she stayed home. So one day she decided to leave. She faked her own death, then disappeared. Some argue that the crime scene in the kitchen looked, stayed. like someone had created the kind of chaos detectives would expect to find after a murder.

In this scenario, Joan would have given herself some kind of self-inflicted wound, one that would leave enough blood to make a mess, but not enough to cause serious damage. Then, after creating the scene, she fled on foot. Where she went after that, nobody knew. When her husband, Martin, heard that theory, he dismissed it outright. He insisted that Joan loved her kids and being a mom. The authorities also found no evidence that Joan had been planning to leave. The second option was the abortion theory.

According to this version, Joan had accidentally gotten pregnant and didn't want a third child, so she arranged for an illegal abortion. but the operation had gone terribly wrong. That could explain the blood and the obvious attempts to clean it up. Maybe the beer bottles that were found in the trash had been used as an anesthetic, and if Joan had tried to call for help, it was possible the doctor had ripped the phone off the wall to stop her from contacting anyone.

If he had been involved in an illegal procedure, he wouldn't want anyone to know. In this scenario, Joan had panicked and run outside until she reached the highway. That's when several people spotted a woman matching Joan's description with blood running down her legs. Still, it's not clear why Joan would have left the house. Whether she was looking for help elsewhere or trying to deal with a situation on her own was anyone's guess. The third theory was that Joan's uncle, Frank Natress, with her. somehow involved in her disappearance in potential murder.

There was no proof that Jones' allegations of sexual abuse had gotten back to her uncle, but if they had, even decades after the fact, he might have retaliated to keep her quiet. Some people wondered if Frank had enlisted the help of his son, Ben. Maybe they had gone over to Jones' house to confront her, but things spiraled out of control. But again, there was no proof of this theory. It was just another possibility amid a whole slew of them. The fourth possibility was the amnesia theory. Martin believed Joan had suffered from some sort of dissociative amnesia,

or, more specifically, dissociative fugue. It's caused by intense trauma or stress, and can come on very suddenly, even for those without a history of amnesia or related. issues. Although dissociative fugue is rare, Martin thought it was the most likely explanation. He believed Joan was suddenly overcome with the condition. Then, without realizing what she was doing, she hurt herself and wandered off. If that was the case, it meant Joan might still be alive without any memory of her previous life.

But the evidence called this theory into question, the fingerprints showed a second person had been in the kitchen, which left the fifth and final possibility. Joan was kidnapped by a stranger and potentially murdered. Occam's razor would suggest this was the most likely of all the scenarios. But by the start of the new year, two months after Joan disappeared, there were still no answers. On January 3, 1962, Boston's record American newspaper offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who could help move the search forward. That would be over $50,000 today.

But once again, nothing came of it. The reward went unclaimed. detectives worried there would be no further developments. But then, a whole year later, a reporter uncovered something that threw the entire case back into overdrive. In February, 1963, 40-year-old Serene Gerson was at the Lincoln Library. Serene was a reporter for the local paper, The Fence Viewer. That day, she was doing some research that involved reading a book

about Brigham Young's 27th wife who had mysteriously disappeared. That was when Serene noticed something interesting. On the checkout car tucked into the front was Joan Rish's name. She had borrowed the book on September 16, 1961, just over a month before she disappeared. Something about that nagged at Serene. It seemed like an incredible coincidence that a housewife who had vanished had been reading about another woman who'd done the same thing. Serene abandoned her previous project and started scouring the library for any other books Joan had borrowed. It wasn't long until she found another one.

This next book was Into Thin Air, the 1957 mystery novel about a woman who vanishes. leaving no trace but blood smears in the bloody towel. Serene knew she was on the right track. She asked the librarians for help, and a group of volunteers started searching through the stacks with her. In total, they found Joan had read 25 books from April, 1961, until her disappearance in October. In addition to Into Thin Air,

it was a book about a schoolboy who disappeared on purpose, an Agatha Christie novel, a book called Rabbit Run about fleeing from problems. More books about missing people. An autobiography from a leading authority about murders and disappearances, and a few travel and nature books were scattered in between. If Joan had never disappeared, that list could have been chalked up to a specific interest. But given what happened in October 19, It seemed like too much of a coincidence to ignore, and it gave a whole new level of credence to the Gone Girl theory.

Maybe she really had been planning on escaping her life and disappearing into the woods. Serene wrote a letter to the author of Into Thin Air, Leopold Ognell, whose pen name was Harry Carmichael. She asked if he had any insights into what have might have. happened with Joan. Her disappearance mirrored the plot of his book so closely that Serene and others thought Joan might have used it as a guide. Leopold gave it some thought. Eventually, he said he suspected Joan was still alive, living somewhere between Boston and New York. He kept any further guesses to himself. He said he was thinking about writing a book inspired by Joan's case. Despite Serene's discovery, the authorities still weren't convinced Joan had purposely disappeared.

However, they agreed that if she had left her old life behind, there was one thing that probably remained constant, her love of books. They figured she would have found work at a bookstore, or at the very least tried to get her hands on new reading material. So police sent flyers across the East Coast to libraries and bookstores asking if anyone had seen her. Well, Martin thought that was a good strategy. He also thought she might have found a teaching job since that had always been her plan once the kids were older. But if anyone knew where Joan ended up, they kept it to themselves. Once again, any hope that might have come from the library clue, only deepened the mystery.

Jones' case has never been solved. Until the day he died in 2009, Martin believed she was still alive. He refused to legally declare her dead. That way her case file and the investigation could stay open, and technically it still is. Today, Joan would be 95 years old. Her children, Lillian and David, have seen. stayed out of the public eye.

But there's no doubt that the trauma of their mother's disappearance has stayed with them, especially David, the only witness to what happened in that house so many decades ago. At this point, it seems unlikely that we'll ever know the truth. But maybe Joan would have wanted it that way. Maybe she really was setting the stage for a hard-hitting mystery novel. one without a definitive ending. Perhaps she was trying to send us a message that sometimes we don't need to know all the answers.

What we do know is that Joan Rish overcame a traumatic childhood and became a brilliant young woman. And while she was certainly a caring wife and mother, Joan was much more than any of those labels. At the end of the day, she was a person. and we're the most complex animals of all. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories.

Come back next time for the story of another murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, Reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts.

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Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertsowski, Sarah Camp, Alex Burns, Sheila Patterson, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening. Hi, it's Carter. If you love Murder True Crime Stories, check out the new Crime House original about disappearances. The Final Hours, hosted by Sarah Turney and Courtney Nicole. Listen and follow The Final Hours on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.