Disappearance of Joan Risch

[Damaso Marte]

This was featured on the front page of Wikipedia the other day. I was unaware of the case, despite once having lived in the area where it happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Joan_Risch

http://strangeco.blogspot.com/2014/10/joan-risch-runaway-wife-or-murder-victim.html

Short version: housewife disappears from her home while her paper company executive husband is on a business trip. house is covered in blood, but police conclude it was not from a fatal wound. woman matching her description is observed by two witnesses walking along the side of a highway, apparently in a state of confusion

Months later, it is revealed that Joan Risch had checked out a large number of books from the local library about women who had faked their disappearance.

No body is ever found...

[Damaso Marte]

1996 news article that appears to be a major source for the Wikipedia page about this:

http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/1996/08/28/8_28_96_spatterd_blood_and_speculation/?page=2

Note the police investigator assigned to this case said over 3 decades later that he has a theory...but doesn't care to share it, presumably because he does not have proof. A lesson for some on this forum?

[Mayerling]

1996 news article that appears to be a major source for the Wikipedia page about this:

http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/1996/08/28/8_28_96_spatterd_blood_and_speculation/?page=2

Note the police investigator assigned to this case said over 3 decades later that he has a theory...but doesn't care to share it, presumably because he does not have proof. A lesson for some on this forum?

Actually the detective said he had "theories" about the case (not one theory), so his reticence here is understandable - he doesn't know which theory to follow as the chief one (at least he does not mention which he thinks is his best theory).

Also about the books that she took out (twenty five of them). Some were about women who vanished, but others were about murders.

Interesting that when she was nine her home in New Jersey burned down and both of her parents died. The cause of this tragedy was apparently unknown.

It is an interesting puzzle.

Jeff

[sdreid]

I have mentioned this case as possibly connected on the Boston Strangler thread I started over on Websleuths.com. If it was connected then it wasn't DeSalvo because he was in prison at the time.

Setting that aside, my own theory is that she was attacked by someone who was waiting inside her home and, not realizing how seriously she was hurt, she tried to clean up her blood. At some point due to loss of blood, she became delirious and wandered out and died somewhere and just has not been found.

[Pcdunn]

Certainly an interesting and puzzling case. Library users of today have more privacy as far as their reading habits go, as most libraries no longer use the old signature checkout cards. As for Mrs Risch being "happy" as a suburban housewife, appearances can be deceiving. She had been a fairly self-sufficient working woman prior to her marriage, and talked of becoming a teacher in the future. Still, she was a very good mother, by all accounts, and apparently her marriage was not in trouble.
Puzzling Cade.

[sdreid]

Yes, there was a theory that she was a runaway but I can't see her leaving a small child alone who could have gotten out of the house and been exposed to things like being hit by a car.

[Pcdunn]

The people at the Strange Company blog in a link given by the OP suggested an abortion gone wrong, do you think there is anything to that?

Another possibility which comes to my mind (because my mother suffered one when I was very small) is a miscarriage.

[sdreid]

The people at the Strange Company blog in a link given by the OP suggested an abortion gone wrong, do you think there is anything to that?

Another possibility which comes to my mind (because my mother suffered one when I was very small) is a miscarriage.

Yes, those have been mentioned on the Websleuths site. She had a busy schedule that day and I would think you'd have a clear calendar for an abortion plus would she do that with her 2 y/o there? Her husband would surely know she was pregnant even if he'd just noticed that she hadn't had a regular period and I haven't seen anywhere that he mentioned anything like that.

The phone was supposedly ripped from the wall so that doesn't make it look like a miscarriage to me. Anything is possible though.