1961 - Lincoln, Massachusetts.

What happened inside Joan Risch’s Lincoln home on October 24, 1961 may never be fully known.

Blood stained the kitchen floor. Someone appeared to have tried to wipe it away. Her two young children were left behind, but Joan herself was nowhere to be found.

As investigators worked to reconstruct Joan’s final known hours, unsettling witness accounts and conflicting clues began to emerge. Was Joan attacked inside her own home? Did she leave willingly? And if she did, why would she leave her children behind?

The theories surrounding her disappearance only seemed to create more questions. Every clue offered a possible explanation, but none could account for everything that happened that afternoon.

More than six decades later, Joan Risch remains missing—and the mystery of what happened to her continues to haunt the quiet Massachusetts neighborhood where she was last seen.

• If you have any information about the Joan Risch case, please contact the cold case unit of Middlesex County, led by the Massachusetts State Police, at (781) 897-6600.

• Episode sources and photos: ⁠https://murdershetold.com/episodes/joan-risch⁠-2

Read ⁠A Kitchen Painted in Blood⁠ by Stephen Ahern

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