MA MA - Joan Risch, 30, Lincoln, 24 Oct 1961

[DD Byrd]

I think Joan was expecting a visitor. Whether or not he was to assist her in staging her disappearance, or it just went sideways and he took her out by force or coercion is the question for me. It would also fit if she was planning to leave but changed her mind, that could defintely end up chaotic.

Joan must have picked up the beer that morning, or had it stashed somewhere until Martin left and then popped it in the fridge. The alternative is the visitor brought it with him, and in '61 likely not from picking up a cold six pack at 7-11. So either Joan knew this man liked beer and got it to offer her guest, or he oddly brought it. And as warm beer typically only comes in to play the morning after a frat party, I would imagine it needed to be cold. Maybe it was to take the edge off...before an attack or before a big decision. Either way, time would have been of the essence and it seems too coincidental she disappeared not only when her daughter was across the street, but that Joan had brought her over. Perhaps this man was in the garage, not waiting to pounce, but rather waiting for Joan to give him the signal the house was clear to enter. And then we're back to a rendevous gone awry, or a planned (by him, or by both) disappearance.

CSI has come a long way, but if investigators felt it looked 'staged,' I would accept it. And prints are prints, so if there weren't any footprints I find that telling. Either this man didn't make any, or he did and wiped them. Joan may have, but the 'clean-up' would be to hide a second person's at the scene. The unknown fingerprint tells me someone else was there before the blood dried.

I believe it was Joan saying "Flossie" on the phone, because not only does it make sense, but I cant get any other explanation to work barring flat out lying. But this only would prove that Joan didn't leave her house as a corpse and was alive sometime after. If the goal was to kill her, it could have been done right then, stabbed to death in her kitchen - and attributed to a home invasion gone wrong six decades ago. But there was clearly more to this. And I think Martin either knew she was alive, or came to know she was.

 

[Betty P]

I’ve read Aherns book and now have the impression that the podcaster misrepresents or didn’t understand the quote from the neighbor about moving the table. The table was lying in the hallway and she moved it enough to open the door.

The crime scene wasn’t “staged”. A guy with a podcast is the only person to make that claim and offers zero evidence to back it up.

I’m not sure I agree with Ahern’s theory about the relative. I do think Joan had a stalker who caught her off guard while she was working outside. Her actions at that point showed her desperately trying to call police for help and trying to protect her infant son.

I think Joan’s husband once said he thought she was alive because his children believed she would return and he wanted to give them hope. His opinion that she may have been harmed or killed by an attacker was probably shared with LE, but not something he said in the presence of his young children.

As a crime victim, Joan had a very low-risk lifestyle. She was in a good marriage, had a stable, happy home life, didn't have any risky habits, was in good health, lived in a relatively safe community, etc.

Any mysterious missing person case such as this one always attracts "cranks" who make harassing phone calls, send letters and call in bizarre tips to LE just to get attention.

I feel badly for Joan's children if they have to still read these terrible stories and social media chatter.

 

[Cedars]

I’ve read Aherns book and now have the impression that the podcaster misrepresents or didn’t understand the quote from the neighbor about moving the table. The table was lying in the hallway and she moved it enough to open the door.

The crime scene wasn’t “staged”. A guy with a podcast is the only person to make that claim and offers zero evidence to back it up.

I’m not sure I agree with Ahern’s theory about the relative. I do think Joan had a stalker who caught her off guard while she was working outside. Her actions at that point showed her desperately trying to call police for help and trying to protect her infant son.

I think Joan’s husband once said he thought she was alive because his children believed she would return and he wanted to give them hope. His opinion that she may have been harmed or killed by an attacker was probably shared with LE, but not something he said in the presence of his young children.

As a crime victim, Joan had a very low-risk lifestyle. She was in a good marriage, had a stable, happy home life, didn't have any risky habits, was in good health, lived in a relatively safe community, etc.

Any mysterious missing person case such as this one always attracts "cranks" who make harassing phone calls, send letters and call in bizarre tips to LE just to get attention.

I feel badly for Joan's children if they have to still read these terrible stories and social media chatter.

I've started reading Ahern on your recommend. I'm not yet up to his theories, but he seems very thorough in laying out what he could find in the police file.

IMO the scene is too confused to be staged (since staging is intended to mislead police, not confuse them) but the one sure thing seems to be that she was trying to phone (perhaps already bleeding) and was prevented from getting through by being knocked down to the ground, and lay bleeding for a time in the corner where there is the most blood. Then the phone receiver was ripped out.

To me, this means she was not in any way cooperative, and violence was used against her. She was probably trying to phone for help (as the phone directory open to emergency numbers indicated)

I also think she was taken by the vehicle sighted by a couple of people who independently described it in her driveway. I can't see her being led away on foot.

As to who, what, why - that's where it's all just speculation, and one theory is as good as another.

JMO

 

[DD Byrd]

(since staging is intended to mislead police, not confuse them)

Gray line here, but I see your point.

My take would be, If you already have blood on the floors, walls, wherever, with no time to make it disappear and therefore have to 'work with it'...then you might be left with trying to at least not leave a clear impression of what happened. And before DNA, the focus would be on prints. I would say the scene was intentionally altered, either by an attempt to clean it up and/or remove tell tale signs Joan was not alone.

That said,"clean up" could be Joan wiping the floor with David's clothing while in shock, to a perpetrator Twistering himself to not to leave marks, or some combination not yet explained. Blood drops on the way to David tell me either someone was checking on him, or more likely, checking he was the only other person in the house.

 

[SteveH]

I’ve read Aherns book and now have the impression that the podcaster misrepresents or didn’t understand the quote from the neighbor about moving the table. The table was lying in the hallway and she moved it enough to open the door.

The crime scene wasn’t “staged”. A guy with a podcast is the only person to make that claim and offers zero evidence to back it up.

I’m not sure I agree with Ahern’s theory about the relative. I do think Joan had a stalker who caught her off guard while she was working outside. Her actions at that point showed her desperately trying to call police for help and trying to protect her infant son.

I think Joan’s husband once said he thought she was alive because his children believed she would return and he wanted to give them hope. His opinion that she may have been harmed or killed by an attacker was probably shared with LE, but not something he said in the presence of his young children.

As a crime victim, Joan had a very low-risk lifestyle. She was in a good marriage, had a stable, happy home life, didn't have any risky habits, was in good health, lived in a relatively safe community, etc.

Any mysterious missing person case such as this one always attracts "cranks" who make harassing phone calls, send letters and call in bizarre tips to LE just to get attention.

I feel badly for Joan's children if they have to still read these terrible stories and social media chatter.

To clarify once and for all.

It is not a "podcaster" making claims that the scene was "staged". It is author and ex-cop Michael C Bouchard, who wrote the book Masquerade and also spoke to Micah Hanks about his theories.

10.19.20. The Disappearance of Joan Risch – The Gralien Report

www.gralienreport.com

I am not supporting Bouchard's claims - they seem a bit far-fetched to me - but he did have lots of experience with crime scenes as a cop. The podcast is worth a listen if you have an hour or so to spare but Bouchard, who has also written about the Dennis Martin disappearance and other mysteries, might not be everyone's cup of tea.

From the sample I can read on Amazon, in his book about Joan Risch Bouchard states:

"Although several theories of Joan Risch's disappearance have circulated throughout the media over the decades there can only be one-of-two possible scenarios that played out.

Joan Risch was either the victim of an unfortunate event, or she had simply staged an alleged crime scene and walked away from her life, leading us down a misguided path for the last sixty years."

The moving of the phone table is a separate matter. No-one has said that the neighbours "staged" the scene. Both Ahern and Bouchard state that Barbara Barker moved the table to get to the basement/cellar. My use of the word "tampering" in inverted commas was supposed to be ironic but perhaps a little unfortunate in that it led to a misunderstanding. Bouchard did make the claim on the podcast that Barbara may have knocked over the phone book when moving the table and replaced it but that doesn't make any sense if the table had already been knocked over and the phone book was on the floor.

Stephen Ahern has also spoken in a two-part podcast by Most Notorious:

He doesn't seem too sold on the idea that it was a relative who carried out the crime (if crime there was) but I haven't read his book and so I don't know what arguments he put forward there. One correction from an earlier comment of mine is that I said that Joan's cousin/foster brother Ben Nattrass had an alibi - he didn't, but the fingerprints didn't match his. There has been some speculation that Ben and a friend who was described as a "ne'er-do-well" might have stolen a car and abducted Joan, possibly to scare her rather than kill her but then something went badly wrong.

I can't rule out Joan (and maybe an accomplice) staging the crime scene and then leaving in the car, but I think it very unlikely she would have left her kids like that and never get back in touch with them. On balance I think she was the victim of a crime, or at the least had extreme pressure put upon her to leave with somebody (maybe more than one person). Of course there is also the question of the "mysterious" phone calls although these could have been from cruel hoaxers.

I would like to see the evidence for your claim that Martin Risch "once said he thought she was alive because his children believed she would return and he wanted to give them hope." That's news to me. Is it in Ahern's book?

I am a little mystified as to your reference to "social media chatter". This is Websleuths! Social media chatter is its raison d'être.

 

[SteveH]

I think Joan was expecting a visitor. Whether or not he was to assist her in staging her disappearance, or it just went sideways and he took her out by force or coercion is the question for me. It would also fit if she was planning to leave but changed her mind, that could defintely end up chaotic.

Joan must have picked up the beer that morning, or had it stashed somewhere until Martin left and then popped it in the fridge. The alternative is the visitor brought it with him, and in '61 likely not from picking up a cold six pack at 7-11. So either Joan knew this man liked beer and got it to offer her guest, or he oddly brought it. And as warm beer typically only comes in to play the morning after a frat party, I would imagine it needed to be cold. Maybe it was to take the edge off...before an attack or before a big decision. Either way, time would have been of the essence and it seems too coincidental she disappeared not only when her daughter was across the street, but that Joan had brought her over. Perhaps this man was in the garage, not waiting to pounce, but rather waiting for Joan to give him the signal the house was clear to enter. And then we're back to a rendevous gone awry, or a planned (by him, or by both) disappearance.

CSI has come a long way, but if investigators felt it looked 'staged,' I would accept it. And prints are prints, so if there weren't any footprints I find that telling. Either this man didn't make any, or he did and wiped them. Joan may have, but the 'clean-up' would be to hide a second person's at the scene. The unknown fingerprint tells me someone else was there before the blood dried.

I believe it was Joan saying "Flossie" on the phone, because not only does it make sense, but I cant get any other explanation to work barring flat out lying. But this only would prove that Joan didn't leave her house as a corpse and was alive sometime after. If the goal was to kill her, it could have been done right then, stabbed to death in her kitchen - and attributed to a home invasion gone wrong six decades ago. But there was clearly more to this. And I think Martin either knew she was alive, or came to know she was.

The "Flossie" call is certainly mysterious. It could be that Joan had told somebody, perhaps jokingly, that she referred to Florence as Flossie, and that either that person or someone they told this to had a malicious streak that came out in a hoax call. Small town gossip and all that. My father's stepmother was also a Florence and some of my relatives, especially my mother, referred to her as "Fluffer", not in a friendly way. I don't know whether old Flo ever knew about the nickname!

Joan could well have been alive for a while if she was "kidnapped", and so she did make those calls. She could have been drugged or under duress but not kept continuously in a confined space. Maybe if the kidnapper knew her (or was a stalker) and was unbalanced and obsessed with her they thought she would be happier with them than with her family. When she made it clear that she wasn't happy she could have been killed. But that is pure speculation.

Some analysts have certainly pointed out that the scene looks "staged", especially Michael C Bouchard - see my other comments. I have difficulty believing that Joan would have done this all by herself despite the similarities with the scene in one of the books she borrowed from the library, but who knows? As they say in the north of England "there's nowt so queer as folks". People do unpredictable things and maybe Joan thought she was a "bad mother" even if she was doing a fantastic job.

I don't place any importance on the beer or the whiskey. We Brits - at least those of us with any taste and style - prefer our beer "warm" as you can actually taste it when it's not chilled to within an inch of its life! Maybe with a Wild Turkey chaser if we are in an extravagant mood.

 

[Cedars]

Purely my speculation here, but I see nothing in Joan's victimology that would lead her, in particular, to be the victim in such a crime. She wasn't alluring, etc.

Rather, I wonder if it was because of the house they'd moved to 6 months earlier. That the perp knew the house, knew it was fairly hidden from observation, felt comfortable committing the crime there.

For example, in the recent Kohberger case, it was, IMO, the house the students lived in, that led to his committing his crime there. He felt comfortable spying on it, parking and breaking into it without being observed.

Sometimes a crime is about the thrill of committing the crime and getting away with it. It is necessary to have a victim, but it's not really about the victim.

JMO

 

[Cedars]

I think it very unlikely she would have left her kids like that and never get back in touch with them. On balance I think she was the victim of a crime, or at the least had extreme pressure put upon her to leave with somebody (maybe more than one person).

I do think this is key. Who the victim is, must be considered in investigating crimes and coming up with theories. Also, you have to understand human behaviour.

Ahern doccuments how police interviewed and multiple times re-interviewed absolutely everyone who knew or interacted with her, and there was no hint of a secret desire to abandon the life she had chosen, nor was she the kind of person who had ever veered off her life course.

She had diligently gone through university and an early successful career, had steadily dated for two years before marrying, had resigned her job to become a homemaker as women did in the late 1950s.

Given her childhood trauma, IMO such a woman would be seeking security, not chafing under it.

Why would such a person chuck it all, where would she go, how would she survive? Did other people in the US do that, at the time? Maybe in the 1970's.

Someone proposing the theory that she did it herself, IMO, needs some shred of evidence about her, that would suggest that as a possibility.

JMO

 

[Andreee]

Purely my speculation here, but I see nothing in Joan's victimology that would lead her, in particular, to be the victim in such a crime. She wasn't alluring, etc.

Rather, I wonder if it was because of the house they'd moved to 6 months earlier. That the perp knew the house, knew it was fairly hidden from observation, felt comfortable committing the crime there.

For example, in the recent Kohberger case, it was, IMO, the house the students lived in, that led to his committing his crime there. He felt comfortable spying on it, parking and breaking into it without being observed.

Sometimes a crime is about the thrill of committing the crime and getting away with it. It is necessary to have a victim, but it's not really about the victim.

JMO

She wasn't alluring?! A person doesn't necessarily have to look or act a certain way to attract a stalker or obsessive admirer in order to be a victim.

 

[DD Byrd]

don't place any importance on the beer or the whiskey

I'd want to know if Joan was a beer drinker. If not, and Martin didn't know where it came from, I suppose all it suggests is someone else was there. I'd imagine they interviewed anyone else who could have come over to the house and had a drink, perhaps there is another person/s who has yet to be named.

 

[Richard]

Joan Carolyn Risch, age 30, Missing since 24 October 1961

Investigating agency: Lincoln Police Department 781-259-8111

LINK:

Joan Carolyn Risch – The Charley Project

 

[fred&edna]

i'm not buying the staged scene. i don't believe joan left willingly, and anything related to an abortion i discounted early on. i'm still sticking with my theory there was something very wrong with her relatives. however, the whys and timing still baffle me. i can only wonder if joan had recently been saying too much about her childhood/teen years which would have caused a lot of trouble for others.

jmo

 

[SteveH]

I'd want to know if Joan was a beer drinker. If not, and Martin didn't know where it came from, I suppose all it suggests is someone else was there. I'd imagine they interviewed anyone else who could have come over to the house and had a drink, perhaps there is another person/s who has yet to be named.

But Martin did know where the beer bottles came from.

From his statement to police:

"We had some company over the week end, they drank some beer. I can't explain the empty beer bottles in the basket in the kitchen. She usually emptied this basket when it was full, she had no regular pattern for getting rid of the trash."

joan risch.pdf

THE SEARCE FOR JOAN RISCH. UiI1 Pond productions ( research team ). -\--. ...

www.docdroid.net

So the accepted narrative that Martin couldn't "explain the empty beer bottles" is a selective quote that ignores his previous sentence about the company over the week end. What he couldn't explain is why the basket hadn't been emptied.

The empty whiskey bottle was apparently on top of the beer bottles and Martin said that Joan and he had finished it the previous night. It was on top because it was finished AFTER the beer bottles had been put in the basket.

 

[SteveH]

The case of a woman, Natalie Scheublin, who was murdered in her house in nearby Bedford in 1971 was solved 50+ years after it happened.

"Police say [Arthur L] Massei bludgeoned 55-year-old Natalie Scheublin to death in her home on June 10, 1971. She was the wife of Raymond Scheublin, who discovered her body in the basement. Mr. Scheublin was a bank president in Lexington at the time. He died in 2011. The couple had two children, one of whom is now a grandmother.

According to a detailed announcement from the DA’s office, advances in technology and dogged investigative work resulted in the arrest....

"In 1999, fingerprint examiners from the Massachusetts State Police used a new tool, the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System…Through AFIS, they were able to identify the defendant as a candidate to review.” Police interviewed the defendant, “who denied ever having been in Bedford or having any knowledge of the murder.”

“Over the course of the investigation of the case, the defendant was interviewed again, at which time he allegedly claimed that he had been solicited by an organized crime associate to murder the wife of a banker and to make the murder look like a break-in. He claimed that he had refused the solicitation. Investigators found no corroborating evidence that Mr. Scheublin was involved in a plot to kill his wife.”"

https://thebedfordcitizen.org/2022/03/after-nearly-51-years-arrest-made-in-murder-of-bedford-resident-natalie-scheublin/