Case Study Of Joan Risch's 'Into Thin Air'

“Mommy is gone and the kitchen is covered with red paint,” four year old Lillian Risch said after discovering that her mother, Joan Carolyn Risch had mysteriously disappeared from their home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The ‘red paint’ turned out to be blood matching Risch’s specific blood type, introducing a whole series of questions into the minds of investigators from all centuries. To this day, the case remains unsolved, but there are three main theories on what actually happened on that melancholy, leery afternoon. This disturbing case could be perceived in three different ways: Joan Risch was secretly a troubled woman who faked her disappearance and fled home, she was brutally killed in an accident on a construction site near her home, or Risch simply suffered an abduction that will never be avenged. One theory on this compelling case assumes that Joan Risch actually faked her own disappearance. While this theory seems far-fetched and outlandish, much of the data collected from this case mysteriously supports the theory. Firstly, Sareen Gerson, a reporter for the local newspaper in the city where Joan Risch was last sighted, found a book checked out under Risch’s name that focused on Brigham Young’s twenty seventh wife, who disappeared in a way similar to Risch. Gerson then found another book, ‘Into Thin Air’, that also discussed a woman who vanished and left nothing but blood smears and a towel. This evidence led to the discovery of twenty five books checked out by