Disappearance investigations are always fascinating. If everything is clear with the murder - there is a body, a murder was committed, then the disappearance only raises a lot of questions. Was it kidnapping or murder? Was there a crime at all or did the person just run away? Maybe someone was harassing or blackmailing him? Or maybe the disappeared just wanted to start a new life?
Here are three mysterious cases of the disappearance of girls that raise many questions, but still have no answers.
Joan Risch
On October 24, 1961, a thirty-year-old housewife and mother of two disappeared without a trace from her home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. This incident became one of the most famous and unsolvable mysteries of the time.
John Risch was born in 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. When she was nine, she and her parents moved to New Jersey, where the girl's parents died in a suspicious fire.
Joan graduated in English Literature from Wilson College in 1952 and began her career as a secretary at a publishing house. The girl purposefully built her career and eventually ended up as editor at Harcourt Brace and World.
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In 1956, she married Martin Riesch and bore him two children - a son, David and a daughter, Lillian. To everyone's surprise, the ambitious woman did not pursue a career, but became a housewife.
Martin, by the nature of his work, was often on business trips. Early in the morning of October 24, he flew to New York. The day did not bode well for any oddities.
In the morning, Joanne asked her neighbor Barbara Barker to look after David while she and her daughter went to the dentist and did some shopping.
After Joan came back and took her son home, she decided to trim the plants in the yard. From that time on, the oddities began.
Joan took her children and left them at a neighbor's house without her knowledge.
Later, Barbara said that she saw Joan in a raincoat walking around the yard in a hurry, carrying an unidentified red object in her hands. The woman did not know that she had children, so she decided that Joan was playing with David and Lillian.
When Barbara found the children with her, she took them home as she was about to leave on business. She decided that Joan was at home.
A few minutes later, Lillian knocked on her door and said that her mother had left, and red paint was spilled at home.
Barbara immediately called the police.
When the police entered the kitchen, they saw a lot of oddities. The kitchen table was overturned and the phone was pulled from its place on the wall and thrown into the trash can. There were also empty beer bottles in the trash can, although Martin and Joanne didn't buy it. Drops of blood and bloody handprints could be seen throughout the house, and rolls of paper towels were scattered on the floor.
Photo from Joan's kitchen after she disappeared.
Unfortunately, neither the blood test nor the fingerprints were ever identified, as the Risch family moved to the city quite recently.
Almost everyone agreed that a tragedy broke out in the house, until the list of books that Joan took from the local library became known. The last 25 books were about mysterious disappearances and murders, and the last book the woman read was about how the girl disappeared from the house, and the only evidence was blood stains and bloody prints.
What happened to Joan? Was she tired of being a housewife and decided to disappear to start life from scratch? Or was she kidnapped? Alas, no one has been able to answer this question.
Paula Jean Welden
Between 1945 and 1950, five bizarre disappearances occurred in the small town of Bennington, Vermont, the most high-profile of which was the case of Paula Jean Weldon.
The 18-year-old was a sophomore at a local college and was nothing out of the ordinary. She devoted a lot of time to her studies, got good grades and did a little part-time in the student cafeteria.
On December 1, 1946, Paula told her roommate that she wanted to take a break from her studies and take a walk along the “long trail” that ran near their college. The trail is approximately 270 miles long and ends at the Canadian border.
Several people met Paulo on the “long path”. One man warned the girl that her clothes were not warm enough for a walk, but the girl went north anyway. She did not have any money with her and even her parent's check remained uncash..
When she hadn’t returned by the time her roommate had gone to bed, she decided that Paula had stayed up late in the library as usual. But as time went on, Paula did not return.
The girl's father, as well as hundreds of students, teachers and volunteers, combed the area, but did not find any traces of the girl.
A waitress at a cafe in Massachusetts said that after Paula disappeared, she served a young, nervous woman who matched her description.
In the next ten years, a Bennington resident told friends twice that he knew where Paula's body was buried, but he was never able to show the police this place. In the end, without any evidence of the crime and the body, the investigation gradually dwindled, and the theories became more and more incredible. Up to the fact that the girl disappeared in the Bennington Triangle, from where the aliens took her to them.
Maura Murray
The disappearance of Maura Murray in February 2004 was so confusing and inexplicable that dozens of TV shows and articles were devoted to him.
The short version of what happened is as follows. Maura Murray, a 21-year-old student nurse, sent e-mails to faculty at her University of Massachusetts informing her that she would be absent from class for a week as she was leaving for a family funeral. It was a lie. Then she packed her bag, took $ 280 off her credit card, bought $ 40 worth of alcohol and went on the trip.
Between 7:00 pm and 7:30 pm, Murray pulled off the road and the car got stuck in the snow. The school bus driver stopped and asked if she needed help. She replied no and begged him not to call 911. Nevertheless, after driving off a little, the driver dialed the emergency number. When the rescuers arrived at the scene of the accident 10 minutes later, Maura was not in the car, nor were there any tracks around.
Police found textbooks, a printed bottle of wine and a printout of directions to Burlington, Vermont in an abandoned car. There was no wallet, no keys, no mobile phone in the car.
Later, some details of her life were revealed. For example, a couple of months before Maura disappeared, she was convicted of fraud with someone else's credit card and was threatened with expulsion from the university. In addition, she recently crashed her father's car while under the influence of alcohol. Family relations were not the best, and Maura and her boyfriend had an affair on the side.
Perhaps she just wanted to escape, but what this resulted in is still unknown.