Missing Housewife Joan Risch

Harold S. Bard was born on August 12, 1894, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the eldest son to Sylvanus M. Bard, a real estate dealer, and Florence M. Bard, homemaker. On March 16, 1918, at the age of 22, Harold joined the U.S. Army. On June 6, following his deployment overseas, Harold was promoted to Corporal of the 39th Infantry. A month before the end of the war, Harold was severely wounded and honorably discharged.

After being discharged, Harold began working as a salesman for Reading Iron Works. On February 9, 1921, he wed girlfriend, Josephine Aimer in Brooklyn, New York, at St. Mark’s M.E. Church. On May 12, 1930, Harold and Josephine welcomed their only child, Joan Carolyn Bard. As a child, Joan was raised in New York until Harold was relocated to Chicago. In the latter half of the 1930s, Harold lost his job when the company went bankrupt. Due to the financial restraint, the family of three moved back to the East Coast, settling into a small apartment above Daly’s real estate firm in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.

Just after 1 a.m. on Feb 23, 1939, Jim McFarland saw smoke billowing from the Bard’s apartment. He alerted the neighbors and they attempted to breach the Bard’s apartment but due to the intense heat and smoke they were unsuccessful. Firefighters arrived and extinguished the fire in the living room in less than 10 minutes. However, the smoke was so thick they could not find the Bards.

After the smoke cleared, Harold was found on the floor of the bedroom with the phone in hand. Josephine was found a few feet away, slumped over in a chair. Both had been overcome by the smoke, but neither was seriously burned.

According to Josephine’s sister, Alice Nattrass, the fire commissioner said, “the fire was started by a penny being put into the fuse box causing a short circuit in the wires behind the sofa. The sofa caught fire, and they were overcome by smoke.” However, according to a report by Mountain Lakes Fire Chief, S. T. Curran, the fire was started by a defective lamp cord.

One witness stated that the Bard’s German Shepherd was found wrapped in a blanket in the basement of the building. The dog had been “put to sleep” and had not died as a result of the fire. However, Curran reported that the dog, who typically slept on Joan’s bed, was found badly burned on the first floor among the debris from the collapse of the second and third floor that injured three firefighters.

Fortunately, at the time of the fire, Joan was visiting her maternal grandmother for the holiday weekend. After the fire, Joan began living with her grandmother until her aunt Alice and her husband, Frank Nattrass, invited Joan to live with them in New Rochelle, New York. Soon thereafter, Joan was officially adopted and changed her name to Joan Carolyn Nattrass.

In 1948, Joan graduated from high school and attended Wilson College where she majored in English Literature. Joan was an active member on campus. She wrote poetry for the student library review and became the assistant editor of her class yearbook. She was elected Vice President of her class, as well as Vice President of the International Relation Club. To cover college expenses, Joan worked part-time waiting tables.

In 1952, Joan graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors. After graduating, Joan worked at Harcourt Brace and World Inc, a book publishing company in New York as a secretary before working her way to a secretarial management position. Joan worked directly under Jack Gallagher in the Harcourt’s College Book Division.

Joan was soon introduced to Martin Risch, a Harvard Law Graduate Student, through a mutual friend. After a double date to a Harvard football game, Joan told her aunt Florence that she had met the man she was going to marry. On December 26, 1955, after two years of dating, Joan and Martin were wed in Huntington, Long Island. A few days later, they moved into an apartment in Brooklyn Heights across the East River from Manhattan.

Six months later, Joan takes a position at Thomas Y. Crowell Co. in New York at the request of Jack. After the birth of their daughter, Lillian, Joan left Crowell to become a homemaker. Soon after the birth of their second child, a son named David, Martin left Riegel Paper Company for a job with Fitchburg Paper Company. A year later, on April 13, 1961, Martin received a promotion to headquarters in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, requiring the family of four to relocate to a four-room red cottage in Ridgefield, Massachusetts.

Joan was an avid reader and found solus at the local library. Ridgefield librarian, Phyllias Paccadolmi, said “After the family moved close enough to the library so Joan could walk to it, she would come in at least twice a week. She almost always borrowed books with some intellectual appeal, though she would choose a best-selling novel on occasion - but never trash…As soon as David was old enough for Joan to take him along, she would come in with both children. By then, Lillian would be browsing around for a book or her own choice-and I’d baby-sit with David. Lillian was an exceptionally well-mannered child.”

On October 24, 1961, Martin left home earlier to catch an 8:00 a.m. flight to New York for an overnight business trip. Shortly after breakfast, Joan dropped David off at her neighbor, Barbara Barker’s home while she and Lillian ran a few errands. They went to the dentist, the bank, and the grocery store before heading home just before 11:00a.m.

Around 11:30 a.m. the dry cleaner arrived to pick up two of Martin’s suits. The dry cleaner, milkman, and mailman failed to notice anything unusual. After lunch, Joan put David down for a nap. Meanwhile, Barbara brought Douglus over to play with Lillian while Joan tended to the garden.

Just before 2 p.m. Joan took Lillian and Douglas to play on the playground in the Barker's backyard without Barbara’s knowledge.

Fifteen minutes later, Barbara looked out her kitchen window and noticed Joan wearing a trench coat carrying something red with her arms outstretched. According to Barbara, Joan looked dazed and was walking quickly, but she just assumed Joan was playing with the kids.

At 3:40 p.m. Barbara brought Lillian home as she needed to run a few errands. Thirty minutes later, she returned home to find Lillian running out of her home screaming “Mommy is gone and the kitchen is covered in red paint.” Barbara entered the home and realized that the red paint was in fact blood. She quickly grabbed David, who was wet and screaming in his crib, and brought the kids back to her house where she called the police.

At 4:33 p.m., police arrived along with Sgt. Mike McHuge moments later. Investigators noticed a table was overturned and the phone had been ripped from the wall and tossed into the wastebasket that sat in the middle of the room. On the counter laid an address book opened to the emergency contact page, but no numbers were written down.

In the wastebasket, investigators found empty liquor bottles that Joan and Martin had drunk the previous night. They also found an empty bottle of beer that Martin had not drunk. It appeared as though someone had attempted to clean up the blood with paper towels and a pair of David’s overalls.

Sgt. Mike noticed blood on the kitchen floor trailed upstairs to David’s bedroom. The trail returned to the kitchen, then continued out the back steps down the driveway before stopping at the trunk of Joan’s vehicle. [Investigator’s don’t believe there was enough blood evident for a life threatening wound] It appeared as though someone had attempted to clean up. The blood type, Type O, matched Joan’s blood type but it was never tested.

However, with all the blood, investigator’s found no footprints. There was however a partial palm print and two fingerprints on the wall, as well as a single thumbprint on the phone. Since Joan had no prints on file, investigator’s could not rule her out.

Initially, it was believed that Joan had committed suicide, therefore the officer called for backup to search the surrounding area to locate a body. Calls were made to local hospitals in search of someone matching Joan’s description but she never turned up. Police orchestrated a full-scale ground and air search for Joan but she could not be located.

Martin was notified of his wife’s disappearance and took a flight back to Massachusetts where he was questioned by police and quickly eliminated as a suspect.

A young neighbor saw a two-toned Oldsmobile Sedan parked behind Joan’s vehicle in the driveway around 3:20 p.m. Around 4:15 p.m. someone noticed a similar vehicle parked along the street. The driver got out of the vehicle and cut a few branches from a tree in the woods nearby then proceeded to drive off. The sighting was confirmed by the milkman who noticed a similar vehicle in the driveway five days earlier.

Other witnesses reported seeing Joan walking along Route 128 in Waltham, near the Cambridge Reservoir. Investigators searched the water but found nothing. Another report had her walking along Route 2A near her home, wearing a loose-fitting gray trench coat and a handkerchief tied under her chin. She was “shuffling along and hunched over” clutching her stomach as blood dripped down her leg.

A reporter for The Fence Viewer, a local Lincoln newspaper, went to the public library to research similar cases and discovered that in the months prior to her disappearance, Joan had checked out twenty-fivel books from the local library about true crime and mystery, mainly regarding murders and disappearances.

The most interesting book, Into Thin Air, which was checked out a month prior to her disappearance, is about a young wife who disappears from her home leaving behind smeared blood and soaked towels. The woman left her husband and newborn behind for a more fulfilling life. Furthermore, rumors started to surface that Joan was sexually molested and physically assaulted as a child. Investigators learned that Joan had mentioned the alleged abuse to Martin, stepbrother Peter, former Manhattan roommates, and Aunt Alice. On one occasion, Josephine’s brother, James, witnessed indications of possible abuse. Frank denied ever touching her in a way that wasn’t fatherly. However, his daughter Evelyn Pleydell claimed she had suffered the same abuse. Without any evidence of abuse, those rumors were put on the back-burner.

Martin Risch and their two children tried to move forward with their lives, always struggling with the idea of never knowing where Joan was. Lillian and David managed to lead successful lives, however, Martin adamantly believed his wife was still alive but suffered from amnesia. He refused to change his phone number, holding onto hope that Joan might possibly call. He never remarried, and in 2009, Martin passed away without having any closure.