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Who Is Joel Rifkin?
Joel Rifkin is a notorious serial killer responsible for a series of murders in New York during the 1990s. His criminal activities began in 1989 when he committed his first murder. To evade detection, Rifkin disposed of his victims’ bodies in remote locations, making identification nearly impossible. His string of killings concluded in June 1993 when he was apprehended by law enforcement officers, who discovered a corpse in his vehicle. In 1994, he was convicted of murder and later pleaded guilty to several additional counts of homicide.
Troubled Childhood
Born on January 20, 1959, to unwed college students in New York, Joel David Rifkin was adopted three weeks later by Bernard and Jeanne Rifkin. The couple later adopted a daughter, Jan, further expanding their family. In 1965, they relocated to East Meadow, Long Island, where Rifkin began attending Prospect Avenue Elementary School. Throughout his early years, he struggled to connect with his peers, often becoming a target for bullying. His exclusion from team sports and neighborhood activities was compounded by a physical condition characterized by a sloping posture and slow gait. Despite possessing an IQ of 128, Rifkin faced academic challenges due to undiagnosed dyslexia.
As he entered adolescence, Rifkin’s desire to fit in intensified. He joined the track team in hopes of building friendships, only to be subjected to ridicule by his teammates. Disheartened by his experiences in athletics, he sought refuge in joining the yearbook staff. Unfortunately, his camera was stolen shortly after he joined, and he was subsequently excluded from the wrap party at the end of the school year, further deepening his feelings of isolation.
Targeting Prostitutes
The persistent mistreatment and social isolation experienced by Joel Rifkin began to take a severe toll on his mental state, leading him to retreat into a disturbing inner world. He developed violent fantasies involving the assault and murder of women, which became increasingly pronounced following his viewing of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Frenzy in 1972. This film sparked an obsession with the idea of strangling prostitutes. Around this period, Rifkin’s parents gifted him a car, which he began using to solicit prostitutes in Hempstead and, later, Manhattan.
Rifkin’s preoccupation with sex workers intensified during his time at Nassau Community College in 1977. His academic performance suffered as he frequently skipped classes and neglected his part-time jobs in favor of spending time with prostitutes. This obsession drained his finances, resulting in a tumultuous living situation where he moved in and out of his parents’ home throughout the 1980s. He attended multiple schools, consistently earned poor grades, and ultimately dropped out in 1984.
By March 1989, Rifkin could no longer suppress his violent urges. After waiting for his mother to leave on a business trip, he picked up a young prostitute named Susie and brought her to his Long Island home. There, he brutally bludgeoned her with a Howitzer artillery shell. When she continued to resist, he strangled her to death. Rifkin then dismembered her body using an X-acto knife, severing her fingertips and removing her teeth with pliers to eliminate any potential identification. He concealed her severed head in an old paint can and disposed of the rest of her remains in garbage bags. The head and legs were discarded in the woods of Hopewell, New Jersey, while the arms and torso were dumped into the East River in New York.
Despite Rifkin’s elaborate efforts to hide the murder, a member of the Hopewell Valley Golf Club discovered Susie’s head a few days later. Law enforcement was unable to identify the victim or the perpetrator of the crime.
Rising Body Count
In the following year, Rifkin claimed his second victim, a prostitute named Julie Blackbird. Similar to his previous crime, he waited until his mother was away and then brought Blackbird to his Long Island residence. The next morning, he beat her with a table leg before strangling her. Rifkin again dismembered her body, this time placing the parts in buckets weighted with concrete and disposing of them in the East River and a Brooklyn canal.
In 1991, Rifkin started a landscaping business, utilizing the rented job site as a storage location for corpses until he could dispose of them properly. Among his victims that year were prostitutes Barbara Jacobs, Mary Ellen DeLuca, and Yun Lee. Ultimately, Rifkin would strangle 17 women, predominantly drug addicts and sex workers. Law enforcement frequently struggled to identify the victims, let alone the perpetrator behind the killings.
In June 1993, Rifkin strangled Tiffany Bresciani and transported her body in his mother’s car, stopping to purchase rope and tarp along the way. After arriving home, he stored Bresciani’s body in a wheelbarrow in the garage for three days. As he prepared to dispose of the remains approximately 15 miles from his home, police noticed his vehicle was missing a rear license plate. When officers attempted to pull him over, Rifkin initiated a high-speed chase, which ended when he crashed into a utility pole. Upon inspection of the vehicle, police detected a strong odor emanating from the backseat, identifying it as the scent of Bresciani’s decomposing body. Rifkin was promptly taken into custody.
Arrest and Imprisonment
On June 28, 1993, homicide detectives began questioning Rifkin. He detailed all 17 murders, providing names and even sketching maps to assist police in locating missing victims. He was subsequently transferred to the Nassau County Correctional Facility in East Meadow in preparation for his trial.
On May 9, 1994, Rifkin received a sentence of 25 years to life for murder, along with a conviction for reckless endangerment related to the car chase. Following the trial, he was moved to Suffolk County Jail, where he pleaded guilty to two additional murder charges, resulting in two consecutive sentences of 25 years to life. By January 1996, Rifkin was facing a minimum of 183 years in prison for seven homicides, with ten counts pending.
In light of ongoing conflicts with other inmates, prison officials deemed Rifkin’s presence disruptive, leading to his placement in solitary confinement at the Attica Correctional Facility for 23 hours a day over a four-year period. In 2000, he attempted to sue the prison, arguing that his solitary confinement violated his constitutional rights; however, the court ruled in favor of the prison.
As of now, Rifkin is incarcerated at the Clinton Correctional Facility, where he resides with over 200 other inmates not permitted to interact with the general population. In 2002, New York’s Supreme Court rejected his appeal against the convictions for the murders of nine women. Currently, he is serving a sentence of 203 years and is eligible for parole in 2197, when he will be 238 years old.