By EEW Magazine Online // Crime

The House of God is usually considered a place of safety, but a woman’s disappearance tied to a preacher made some second-guess this assumption.

25-year-old Joy Lynn Risker went missing from the San Diego home she shared with Pastor Sean Goff, a polygamist, who became the prime suspect in her disappearance—eventually revealed to be a murder—according to Oxygen’s “Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins” that aired Sunday.

Friends called Risker “bubbly” and said she was seeking a father figure after being abandoned by her biological dad in her teens. Before Risker’s mother convinced her to go to church where she met Goff at sixteen years old, the charismatic young woman with lots of friends was a regular around the 90s rave circuit.

“Joy was straddling that line of being a kid and having fun while also trying to maintain respect for her mom,” Risker’s friend, Lora Logan, told Faith Jenkins who has a background as a criminal prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The 45-year-old uses her investigative show to take a closer look at the beginnings of fairytale romances straight through to their nightmarish endings.

Gwen Risker, Joy Risker’s mother, was initially happy when her daughter joined the youth group at church. Finally, the impressionable teenager felt that she had found the father figure she needed, and her life was moving in the right direction.

“He was a very good-looking dude,” said Goff’s friend Leif Wright. “He had the power of a Pentecostal minister but the intelligence of someone who has actually done the research and the study on the doctrines he is espousing.”

As time went on, Risker and Goff grew inseparable, and she became his personal assistant. When Risker turned 18, Goff invited her to live with him and his wife, Sheila, who happily welcomed Risker. In exchange for their hospitality, Risker cared for the couple’s new baby.

In 1997, one year after Risker moved in, Wright, Goff’s friend, accidentally discovered in an email intended for someone else that Risker and Goff were married. That meant the Christian pastor was a polygamist. This was not only illegal, but polygamy was unacceptable in the faith community and had potential to destroy Goff’s ministry if members found out.

“Each of the wives lived in a separate bedroom, and Sean would just alternate between bedrooms,” said Wright. “And Sheila agreed with it because she was raised to believe that the man was the ultimate authority.”

Wright, however, was not in support of his friend’s actions and told Goff to come clean to his congregation, or Wright would. Goff did not heed his friend’s warnings and was kicked out of the ministry once Wright disclosed his secret.

Friends and loved ones, though shocked and concerned, could not convince Risker that this arrangement was not a good idea.

Zeon Santos, a friend of Risker, said she “swore” that Goff had “a big heart” and was “a good person.”

She stayed, and Risker and Goff welcomed their first son on June 7, 2000. That night, Gwen Risker visited her new grandson and collapsed afterward. The next day, Gwen Risker died. According to Joy Risker’s friends, she never truly got over the loss and continued to grieve deeply for her mother.

Yet, Risker and Goff continued going strong, and she gave birth to a second son in 2002, but friends say they saw less and less of her. When they did see Risker with Goff at a wedding, they said they noticed that he was “more controlling and dominant than ever before.”

That disturbing sighting would be friends’ last before Risker vanished without a trace in September 2003.

“Joy’s friends started calling Sean, saying, ‘Where is Joy? What happened?’” said Wright. “He told them that Joy had run off to Europe and that she had left the kids behind and that he was distraught.”

Risker was reported missing Oct. 5, 2003, but friends did not mention to law enforcement that she was in a polygamous relationship.

Shortly after the Missing Person’s report was filed, friends received emails from Risker’s account confirming Goff’s story: she had run off with an ex and wanted time away.

The messages, which seemed too convenient and unlike Risker, did not convince everyone. Some suspected that Goff was behind the bizarre emails. Then things got even more odd when investigators reached out to the Massachusetts-based ex-boyfriend that Risker had supposedly run off with. He said he had not had any contact with Risker in years.

“Now we knew we had to get going on this one,” said Detective Deanna Warrick of the San Diego Police Department. “We needed to find her immediately.”

When police obtained Risker’s phone records, they showed that her last call was to Goff on the evening of Sept. 19, 2003—a detail the former pastor failed to share with investigators. After that discovery was made, however, Goff switched his story, saying the two argued that day, but Risker returned home in the evening. Goff also claimed that the very next day, Risker packed her bags, got into the car, and left.

“To me, it was odd that he waited so long to go into detail on how he knew that Joy had left,” said investigator Linda Koozin. “The fact that she packed and got into a car and drove off.”

Eventually, it came out to investigators that Goff had another wife. That’s when police visited Sheila who maintained that she was away in Santa Barbara with the three children when Risker disappeared.

And once again, Goff changed his story and said that Risker had an accident at home and “was killed.” But, when Detective Tefft pressured Goff to give up the location of Risker’s body, he asked for an attorney.

Goff was placed under arrest for his partial confession, but investigators could not yet charge him with murder.

As details unfolded, detectives discovered that Sheila knew more than she had told them. Though the first wife maintained that she was in Santa Barbara, she said Goff called her, saying there had been an accident involving Risker, and he asked her to help clean up the blood when she came home.

“Sheila had been controlled by his manipulations for years,” said Wright. “So, at that point, she was inclined to believe him almost no matter what he said.”

Investigators discovered cell tower information and receipts confirming Sheila’s whereabouts when Risker disappeared. She was indeed in Santa Barbara.

Investigators got a big break in the case when Sheila granted them permission to search the home. This is where they found evidence of blood in several rooms and proof on Goff’s computer that he had, in fact, sent the fishy emails to Risker’s friends saying she had skipped town with her ex.

Detectives officially charged Goff with murder, but without a body, it could be difficult to secure a conviction, and Goff refused to give up the location of Risker’s body.

But, as it turns out, he didn’t have to. Three months later, two hikers stumbled across some bones in the desert of Maricopa County, Arizona, 400 miles away from San Diego. DNA confirmed that the remains were Joy Risker’s.

Two years later, at his trial, Goff claimed self-defense, but the jury didn’t buy it. In 2006, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years behind bars, where he is currently housed at the Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California.