This card carries a strange "Secret". JR's own motive to disappear? I've not found any information about the card. It's included on the previously referenced Pinterest page.
I do not know if the 'greeting card' was written and sent by the "crackpot" referenced in a Police Department letter.
According to an article in the Boston American Record, Thursday, January 11, 1962, JR had:
...no known enemies.
...no known grudge-bearers.
...no known detractors.
...maybe one or two unknown enemies?:
1) a man, perhaps, who fancied himself as her lover and brooded over her failure to respond to him.
2) a woman, possibly, crazed by jealousy of her husband's open admirationn for Mrs. Risch.
...no lover, but she may have had a secret admirer. She may have known him without knowing his feelings for her. She may not have known him at all.
A man came under suspicion in early January, 1962, and remained under surveillance for a time. No further information.
The first and only time George Robichaud and his wife met JR was when she showed up at their house (next door) with her two children to introdce herself, three months before she disappeared. GR and Walter Bardsley were working in GR's closed barn less than 70 feet distance from the Risch home during the day of JR's disappearance.
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I FIND THIS STRANGE: if JR was surprised by an attacker, why did she not SCREAM? Or, maybe she did scream and no one heard. Did JR suffer injury to her mouth/throat? If JR screamed (assuming she was able to do so) after she exited her house I would expect the two men in the barn, 70 feet away, could have heard unless machinery/noise obscured the sound.
I expect JR was unable to scream after the violence occurred, and she did not exit the house under her own power. She was likely manhandled to the perp's car, with attempts to escape his grip occurring when they approached/were passing JR's car (would explain the numerous blood locations on that vehicle).
We may safely assume the perp's car was stained with blood, either in the trunk or on seating upholstery, and possibly on the body. How did the perp ensure that blood was not discovered by anyone? Was the perp a loaner? Did the perp ditch the vehicle, or clean and keep it for years afterward?
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According to a Boston Record American, Thursday, October 26, 1961 article, State Police Detective Harnois theorized, "Mrs. Risch left under duress, after a furious struggle, to save the lives of her two children. She sent her 4-year-old daughter across the street to the home of Mrs. Barbara Barker. There was a possibility that Mrs. Risch had been carried off by a sex maniac."
A woman neighbor reported receiving a call from an unidentified man a week ago [~5 days before JR disappeared] and then being accosted on the street. Tuesday [same day JR disappeared], another woman neighbor said she received a call from a man who asked, oddly, to speak with the missing woman. She told him Mrs. Risch wasn't with her.
What the posse of state and local police and volunteers and the helicopters, one from Ft. Devens, the other owned by [Martin] Risch's employers were looking for was a gray car.
The Detective said it seemd to him that Mrs. Risch was "so desperate that she even tried to climb a kitchen wall to get away from the intruder." He pointed to a bloody handprint on the wall. There were other signs of her desperation, as well as a trail of blood that led to the upstairs bedroom in which her son was sleeping.
A telephone book lay open to the first page where blank spaces appear to emergency phone numbers, police, fire department, ambulance, doctor, poison information center and Rescue, Inc., the mission to prevent suicide.
The kitchen wall telephone receiver had been ripped off the instrument and flung into a waste basket.
"It looks as if she was trying to call the police when the phone was snatched from her hand.
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I FIND THIS STRANGE: why would someone who snatched the handset from JR's grip during mid-call attempt and "ripped" the cord from the wall-mounted piece, seemingly 'place' the handset receiver (as if 'hanging it up') on the rim of the basket and then drape the cord in to the basket among empty food can, liquor bottle and other discards so that the cord wouldn't lay on the floor?
Why was the handset not thrown to the floor if it were such a "desperate" encounter? There are possible explanations, some might not fit with logic... unless we assume the 4-year-old daughter discovered the handset-with-cord on the floor when she returned home from the neighbor, and 'hung it up' on the baskt rim, but that introduces a slew of other questions regarding other objects in the scene, such as the son's bloodied overalls; did the daughter use the overalls to attempt to cleanup the 'red paint' before leaving the scene to go back to the neighbor to get help? Did she move the basket or other objects in the scene? LE or MR likely asked the daughter her exact moves and we're not privy to her replies.
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This is not a cast-off pattern. This is not passive spatter. This appears to be impact spatter, varying size and density, minimal elongation. Maybe by a shoe stepping hard on to a pool of blood. The dark object next to the towel might be a toy and/or a piece from a larger object. No finger, hand or other smudge on the wall. Also, was this a blood cleanup attempt on the floor, or an intent to obscure a shoeprint(s). Again, we do not know if the daughter attempted to cleanup the "red paint". If not, I assume someone wanted to obscure footprints... but then why would they ignore finger and hand prints?
It appears the violent part of the confrontation did not approach the sink side of the kitchen; the countertop appears undisturbed and blood is conspicuously absent from most of this scene; only a few passive spatter blood drops can be seen in front of the waste basket/bucket. It makes sense the kitchen confrontation occurred at the phone location. It is unknown if the violence began before or after JR reached for the phone. Upon looking at this image you'd never know that violence occurred behind the camera. The odd elements are the objects on the floor and handset in the basket, but explainable in a household with young children.
I was confused seeing this type paper roll in the R's kitchen; it is not the typical roll of paper 'towels' with which we are familiar. It does not appear to be perforated. It is likely from MR's workplace (was an exeutive at the Fitchburg Paper Company). The core tube is larger than what we see in a consumer product. I'm not sure if it's paper 'towel' or paper for other purpose. In front of the roll are two books, one a chidren's book with a rabbit on the cover, the larger is indeterminate.
A "secret" phone call (police hid this call from the public until months later when MR compained LE was not doing their job) was received at the Risch home within one week of JR's disappearance. A temporary housekeep (hired to mind the children) answered the phone, and a woman on the other end of the call hesitantly asked, "Flossie? Is that you?" The woman sounded confused. The housekeeper said she wasn't "Flossie", but tried to keep the woman talking. There was no response from the woman, only silence. The housekeeper then hung up. Attempts to trace the call were unsuccessful.
JR had a blood-aunt named, Florence Bard. Only JR and MR called her "Flossie". FB eventually came to the house a few days after the phone call and stayed a few weeks. Was it JR who placed the mysterious call less than a week after she disappeared? Why did she call and then ultimately remain silent? Maybe she thought she misdialed? Was FB (also) in on the 'disappearance' and JR was expecting to hear FB, but was confused when she heard a stranger's (the temporary housekeeper) voice? That last question remains relevant based on information that JR had read "many books on vanishing into new life".
It never made sense to me that a blood trail lead 'up to the bedroom." Assuming the confrontation began on the first floor/in the kitchen why would JR run upstairs and lead her attacker to where her 2-year-old son was napping?
It would make sense if JR was already in the bedroom when an attacker appeared in the bedroom and attacked her there first, or she found the attacker in the bedroom when she went upstairs to check on her son. Initial confrontation there, then JR runs downstairs to the kitchen and attempts to call police, etc. Another element that supports an "already upstairs" theory is there were only blood drops in and leading from the bedroom to downstairs and then with further confrontation occurring in the kitchen, the greater amount of blood was discovered there. It's safe to assume the confrontation escalated with the attempt to use the phone.
If it was an abduction, we'll likely never know what happened. I would expect blood evidence was retained. If JR fought back, maybe advanced DNA testing might reveal a mixture of blood?
Fifteen days after JR's disappearance, searches hit a dead end. JR's foster mother was questioned in San Francisco and JR's and MR's backgrounds were checked; there were no standout issues.
Newspaper headlines indicated the "blood" evidence was key. If all of the blood on the broad scene was from only JR, then there is no hope. The "gray car" sightings and the finger/handprint evidence are likely useless today.
THIS IS A QUOTE FROM AN ARTICLE IN AN UNKNOWN NEWSPAPER, DATED NOVEMBER 8, 1961:
"Police at first believed Mrs. Risch has been kidnapped after a bloody battle for her honor and her small children, but detectives have been unable to locate anybody who saw a strange man at the house after Mrs. Risch returned from a dental appointment."
The information in that quote might explain why MR had reason to complain LE was not doing their job. LE may have given more weight to the possibility JR staged her 'attack' and 'disappearance'.
But this mystery remains: the unknown "gray car" in the driveway.
