The following link contains pics of the kitchen. These pics have caused me to go hmm? more than a few times. Studying them is not easy on my phone so let me know what you see. Am I reading too much into the kitchen?
https://the-line-up.com/joan-risch
The roll of paper towels on the floor in a kitchen where there isn't much out of place. They aren't the type of thing you leave on the floor with a small child. There is something on the floor in the blood. Anyone know what it is? My best guess is she was putting a the new roll on when whatever happened happened. Maybe they were knocked off in a struggle or she dropped them and just hadn't picked them up yet. Probably means nothing.
The trash can. Not a trash can. It's a pail. I can imagine no housewife using a pail as a trash can. The little square under the cupboard trashcans, yes, but not a pail. With kids she'd be emptying constantly. The items in/on the pail look placed there.
The kitchen pics scream to me that the pail holds the answers. Is there an inventory of the pail?
I agree with you. I think she most likely injured herself or had some kind of medical emergency but then wandered into the wrong spot and died. She could have stumbled into a flooded pit and drowned, or she could have passed out and died in the woods. Even if she had been mere yards from the road she might not have been found. She would have become covered with fallen leaves within days.The small pail with the beer/liquor bottles would probably fit under the sink cabinet. Maybe while her daughter was at the neighbor's and her son was asleep she decided to do some tidying up. She might have pulled the pail out to empty it and something happened about that time. I wouldn't think with small kids she would just leave a pail full of bottles that once contained alcohol out in the open where they could get into them. I still think she had an accident or medical emergency that afternoon. Maybe slipped and hit her head? Maybe cut herself on a glass bottle, bled profusely, and while trying to clean up the blood with the paper towels she slipped in the blood? Became faint?
If no one had seen a woman walking along the road that might have been Joan with blood on her, I'd think she was either abducted or she just walked out of her life and staged the house to look like someone attacked her. But I feel like if someone attacked her they wouldn't have let her get away to wander along the roadway.
I find nothing odd about the pail used as a trash container. Perhaps it was the only size that would fit under the sink. Most women back then tried to hide their garbage out of sight because it was smelly and unsightly. No plastic trash bags back then; usually housewives would just stick a paper trash bag inside as a liner.
Did LE ever search the areas around the roadway ? I thought they had. I did read that the woman seen walking along the roadway did not falter, or sway, or seem disoriented. She was said to be seen walking with her head down, walking fairly quickly. I do believe that if she had suffered a medical mishap at her home she would have gone to her neighbor's house, rather than deliberately leave her two very young kids, jmo though.
Something I wonder about : the first LEO on the scene believed it was a suicide. Did he think this because of things that the neighbor told him ?
Maybe because the probability of suicide is higher than that of abduction out of the home during the day? Just a guess...
Interesting thought. I would have thought a suicide would be more likely if Joan's body was present ? And the blood drops which abruptly stopped in the driveway would work against suicide I suppose. jmo, though.
The Wikipedia article says the neighbor saw her carrying something red in her outstretched arms going from the car to the garage. For some reason I'd always pictured it the other way around, with her moving from the direction of the house toward the car. I thought maybe she had bloody paper towels in her arms. It sounds like she was already wounded and in a state of confusion when the neighbor saw her, wandering around disoriented. This might explain the areas of blood on the car, as if she leaned against the car in several spots or placed the bloody towels or whatever they were on the car. A person who is thinking clearly would go get help from nearby neighbors but I don't think she was thinking clearly.
We don't know how much blood she actually lost. The smears in the kitchen look like quite a lot, although the investigators didn't think it was enough to cause loss of life. But we don't know how much she might have soaked up with paper towels or how much she lost while wandering down the road, if indeed she is the woman who was sighted with something running down her legs. Blood loss alone may have caused her to collapse somewhere along the way or to wander in a confused state into a wooded area.
Interesting thought. I would have thought a suicide would be more likely if Joan's body was present ? And the blood drops which abruptly stopped in the driveway would work against suicide I suppose. jmo, though.
I'm late in catching up to this forum but I agree. Something just says "foul play" to me.I don't think it's likely that an abortion explains things. The kitchen shows signs of a struggle. I don't think it was staged.
I recall reading a long way back something about an unmarked police car being seen in Joan's driveway several times. Looking for this info....interesting if true.
Liz, you have some of the information correct. The two-tone car sightings and whether it was an unmarked police vehicle has always held the key as far as I am concerned. The issue is not without its controversy as well. IMO there were several credible sightings of a blue two-tone car in the Risch's driveway, coming out of the driveway, and on one or more of the surrounding streets. The police seemed a bit dismissive of these accounts and said they are mixing it up with a possible unmarked police car at the house after 4:30. I believe the eyewitnesses and I find the police explanation...let me be kind and say curious. Liz, I think (?) I recall reading an account or a newspaper story where there was several sightings of a blue two-toned vehicle in the weeks leading up to Joan's disappearance. These sightings were explained by someone (?) saying it was an undercover or unmarked police vehicle. The only verified eyewitness account I recall where the person actually saw a two-tone vehicle in the driveway before October 24th was the milkman. This sighting has always held a key to me. Given my cynical nature, The whole two-tone car story, the police rebuttal to the sightings and whether it was an undercover vehicle gets me speculating on what may or may not have happened here....
Yes, that's what I had read, that there was a car parked in Joan's driveway in the weeks leading up to her disappearance and it was later said to be an unmarked police car. Was a LEO involved with Joan, I wonder ?