It seemed like the only people who noticed him were his childhood tormenters,he thought. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. New York: Berkley Books, 1994. Chainsaws, people screaming, fine. He was confined to his cell at the Attica Correctional Facility for 23 hours per day. He said he disposed of the bodies in threes. Instead, he picked up a souvenir howitzer shell and beat her furiously. Joel Rifkin, New York's most prolific serial killer, is the subject of a new true-crime documentary on Oxygen. His upstairs bedroom yielded 75 pieces of womens jewelry, photographs Rifkin had taken of several unidentified women, various items of feminine clothing, makeup cases, a womans curling iron, wallets and pocketbooks, plus a mixed bag of ID cards. Winded from the battle, Rifkin claimed her bra and panties, earrings, ID cards and drug syringe as trophies for his cache. Rifkin later claimed that he asked for a lawyer at least 20 times and was always refused, investigators telling him he couldnt speak with counsel until you give us one more homicide. The written transcript of his interview, presumably reconstructed from memory, suggests that Rifkin was offered a lawyer and declined. During questioning, Rifkin described her death in clinical detail, but his emotional detachment was not the worst part of the confession. Police found Evens drivers license at his home. Decomposition made it impossible to determine a cause of death, and she was buried nameless, unidentified until June 1993. New York State Police escort Joel Rifkin, 34, a landscaper from East Meadow, to a holding cell after charging him with second-degree murder in East Farmingdale, L.I. According to wikipedia latest update, he is still alive. He placed her body into a 55-gallon oil drum and dumped it into the East River. . Rifkin was AWOL from his part-time job at an East Meadow liquor store, looking for trouble. As the hearing dragged on, Rifkins lawyers alienated Judge Wexner by Soshnick repeatedly arriving late for court and unprepared and Lawrence missing whole days. Rifkin's downfall came about simply because of a "25 cent mistake," as he told the New York Daily News. This is truly a one of a kind collectors item for anyone interested in the macabre world of true crime, prison art or the strange world of murderabelia. Her body was never recovered. There was another oil drum victim, Joel insists, although he doesnt know her name and cant recall exactly when he dropped her body in the Harlem River. There was none of that. They drove to a point near the Manhattan Bridge, Rifkin clutching at her throat without the usual preliminaries. Instead, he was a rather meek, unassuming child. We are happy to say that the Serial Killer Trading Cards are back! The rest would be revealed to her on television, hours later, when detectives laid the outline of their case before the media. Joel left his parents several times, renting small apartments, but he was never gone long, always moving home again when his latest job fell through. Well, 17 girls thought that, and now theyre dead.. One high school date was scuttled after fellow track team members trapped him in the gym and pelted him with eggs, forcing Joel to call his father for help. The oil drum worked so well for Rifkin that he purchased several more for use as makeshift coffins. State Police Sgt. Rifkin had reached the detonation point. Joel David Rifkin (born January 20, 1959) is an American serial killer convicted of the murder of 9 women (although it is believed he killed as many as 17), mostly drug addicted prostitutes, between 1989 and 1993 in New York City. Joel delivered a eulogy at his fathers funeral, moving the mourners to tears, and his depression deepened. Wiles Stabile. He paid a fine and managed to conceal the incident from his mother, ranging farther afield to seek hookers in Manhattan when he felt the urge. Lees ex-husband identified the body, sparing her from an unmarked grave. She was a prostitute, he told the officers. In Rifkins cluttered garage, detectives followed their noses to a reeking wheelbarrow, extracting three ounces of human blood. Her mother told the newspaper in 1993 that her daughter had been a happy and outspoken child, who later struggled with drug abuse and began to work as a prostitute. Legal Statement. A forensic anthropologist was hired to reconstruct the victims face, but Rifkin confessed before the model was finished. DNA tests confirmed her identity. In 1989, Rifkin picked up a sex worker named "Susie." He was subtly obnoxious, like his presence annoyed you. Rifkin joined the track team, in an effort to fit in, and was rewarded with the nickname lard ass. Teammates hid his clothes and shoved his head into a toilet bowl. Pulitzer, Lisa, and Joan Swirsky. Joel Rifkin will celebrate 65rd birthday on a Saturday 20th of January 2024. Rifkin then asked for paper, a pen, a map and a calendar, and wrote out a list of 17 victims, how he killed them and where he left them. 2 men found drugged after leaving NYC gay bars were killed, medical examiner says. A pair of womens panties lay on the floor, near a stockpile of rope and tarp. At the time, she was pursuing her dreams of becoming a singer and actress. Klein became chief of Nassaus Major Offense Bureau soon afterward. The 21-year-old who was also the mother of a young son had been staying at the time with her grandmother in New York City when she disappeared. Her body was discovered in Cornwall in October 1991, a month after she had been reported missing by her family, The New York Timessaidin 1993. Rifkins first attempt at higher education took him to Nassau Community College, on Long Island. It didnt fully come home to me what was happening until later., Things went from bad to worse at East Meadow High School. The special revealed that while his mother was out of town, he brought her back home. But other times, Lawrence said his client made him uncomfortable. Attorney John Lawrence, shown in his office June 14,was Joel Rifkin's triallawyer. Whats in a name? In every high school, theres a kid that doesnt get girls,but they dont go ahead and murder 17 women.". WebJoel David Rifkin (born January 20, 1959) is an American serial killer, who was sentenced to 203 years in prison for the murders of nine women between 1989 and 1993, though it is believed he had up to 17 victims. Although the magazine takes this subject very seriously and in no way attempts to glorify the crimes describe in it, it also provides a unique collection of rare treats (including mini biographical comics, crossword puzzles and trivia quizzes). He had forgotten names of several victims and knew others only by their street names. He directed police to the remains of Lauren Marquez and Iris Sanchez, found five hours apart on June 29, but Julie Blackbird was gone forever. When asked about the body, Rifkin said, She was a prostitute. He was later acquitted. He parked near a schoolyard fence and strangled her while she performed oral sex, discovering her HIV-positive status when he found a bottle of AZT in her purse. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. The main story plot concerned Elaine (Julie Louis-Dreyfus) going out with a likable guy named Joel Rifkin (Anthony Cistaro) at the same time serial Joel Rifkins gruesome exploits were all over the news. The victim was prostitute Julie Blackbird, selected for her pseudo-Madonna look. Rifkin drove her home to East Meadow when his mother was again out of town, and they spent the night together. Rifkins first victim of 1993 was Leah Evens, a 28-year-old who lived with her mother in Brooklyn. Jenny Soto was the last victim of 1992, a 23-year-old addict whose many trips to detox never turned her life around. Rifkin was sentenced to 203 years to life in prison and he is not eligible for parole until 2197. This is the best deal on the site. Officers staked out the house in East Meadow, where Rifkin lived with his sister and elderly mother. Police just noticed him because his vehicle was missing a license plate. Lawrence said he paid an enormous toll, starting with the day of the conviction. Before Rifkin left for college, hedrove to New York City and picked up a sex workerfor the first time. O.J.! trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":" Joel Rifkin ","geo":"","time":"today 12-m"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"q=Joel Rifkin&date=today 12-m","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"}); Joel Rifkin net worth and salary: Joel Rifkin is a Criminal who has a net worth of $100 Million. Evens had been the daughter of a civil court judge and had once attended Sarah Lawrence College. Elaine told her new beau he should change his name. He complained to his landlord, I keep losing all my customers, and by summer he was falling behind on his rent. Rifkins ninth victim, ironically, surfaced before numbers seven and eight. He spent more than four years in solitary confinement before being transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Clinton County. State Troopers who chased down his pickup truck for a routine traffic violation said they found a woman's decomposing body in the back and a driver who confessed to killing 17 women. Things seemed to go downhill from there. He will be eligible for parole in 2197. He wanted to know why he lacked that empathy and humanity. Williams, a former cheerleader at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, had struggled with an addiction to crack cocaine after her marriage broke up and often turned to prostitution to help support the habit, according to Newsday. Despite his confessions and the overwhelming evidence against him, Rifkin pled not guilty at his murder trial. Rifkin refused, strangling her when she started to cry. Out of the 17 women Rifkin said he murdered, two have yet to be identified. "None of them were throwaways.". He drifted in and out of jobs, mostly living at home, enjoying one brief relationship with a girl who recalls him as sweet, but always depressed. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy. Birthday: January 20, 1959 How Old - Age: 64 Recently Passed Away Celebrities and Famous People. The pickup truck Joel Rifkin was driving when he was caught sits at New York State Police Headquarters in Farmingdale on June 28, 1993. Credit: Newsday/Jim Peppler. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! You dont even use a name, its just initials. Joel Rifkin was an unemployed New York landscaper living a darkdouble life as a prolific serial killer claiming the lives of 17 women, a staggering total. Rifkin told Dietz in detail how he planned his killings, how he avoided detection, how he got sexual gratification from both the killings and the victims personal effects much to Lawrences dismay. He enjoyed the photography club but turned in his usual lackluster academic performance over the next two years, before dropping out in 1980. He offered no resistance as police removed him from the pickup, frisked him for weapons and removed an X-acto knife from his pocket. He wasn'tcapable of that. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. I want to get all these families together and I want everybody to be there in court with me, she said at the time. As before, Joel cut most of his classes, focused for the most part on repairing his truck, renting video porn and trolling for prey. That one was easy.' It came from the dead body of Tiffany Bresciani, 22, the girlfriend of Dave Rubinstein (a.k.a. New York: St. Martins Press, 1993. Rifkin was ultimately sentenced to 203 years in prison, where he remains to this day. After Rifkin was convicted in Nassau, he was sent to Suffolk where he faced two murder charges. Her family described Soto as a quiet Brooklyn girl who loved to play with her nieces and nephews but said she had a wilder side when she went into the city. Later, he recalled the act as very automatic. "In an effort to show there was some grain of decency in him, he wrote this manifesto, a proposal really, to establish a facility where wayward women that had been living on the streets could go be safe. June 29, 1993. Seventeen women in total were murdered by this shadowy figure but police at the time weren't even aware he existed. A 9 a.m. media report cleared up the mystery, and Jeanne phoned her lawyer, who referred her to criminal attorney Robert Sale. Joel Rifkin - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday Police learned their mistake a year later, when Rifkin confessed to her slaying, but number nine remains anonymous, the last Jane Doe. When told his truck had no rear license plate, Rifkin assured the officers it had been present when he left his home, some 40 minutes earlier. Every issue of Serial Killer Magazine, every Ultimate Collection, trainscript, FBI file and more! He picked her up on West 46th Street in Manhattan and strangled her in his car during oral sex, describing the event as very quick. Afterward, he drove back to Long Island with the body slumped beside him, concealing her under a tarp at his rented workplace. Confidential (1997) and The Sum of All Fears (2002). But he accelerated, speeding down the next off-ramp, into the streets of Wantagh. Unlike Orvieto, Holloman was identified from dental records and returned to her family for burial. Type of Villain John James Rambo is the main protagonist of the 1972 novel First Blood and its 1982 film adaptation. Credit: Jessica Rotkiewicz. Briefly distracted by a man who passed the car walking a dog, he almost let Marquez escape. Rifkin, who is the focus of Oxygen's upcoming special,"RifkinonRifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer" airing Saturday, April 10 at 7/6conOxygenas part ofSerial Killer Week,often targeted sex workers,who he was able to kill without calling much too much attention to their disappearances. At first he was telling us like he didnt know anything about the body in the back of the car and then he was basically saying that he knew she was there but he doesnt know what happened, former New York State Police Trooper Sean Ruane told CNN in 2018. She vowed at the time to be present in the courtroom to let Rifkin and others know that the victims had been more than sex workers. Within weeks, Rifkin faced murder charges not only in Nassau but in the numerous other counties where he had dumped other victims. The suppression hearing convened before Judge Ira Wexner on November 8, 1993, Soshnick and Lawrence picking up where Sale left off in the effort to quash Rifkins confession. In early 1994, it was reported that Rifkin had engaged in a jailhouse scuffle with mass murderer Colin Ferguson. He struggled with confidence and lacked natural athletic ability, a trait that frustrated his father endlessly, according to "Rifkin on Rifkin.". It didn't help matters that he was constantly seeking his father's approval, too. Evens had been the daughter of a civil court judge and had once attended Sarah Lawrence College. But Susie has never been identified. In many ways, it was almost like a tsunami.. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa. By March 1994 Wexner had heard enough to reject the various defense motions outright and hold Rifkin for trial, scheduled for mid-April. Rifkin initially told investigators that he'd driven to New York City in 1989 to pick up a prostitute named Susie, according to a 2013The Associated Pressarticle. Oxygen's new documentary on Joel Rifkin is part of their 'Serial Killer Week" line-up. "There were no cameras on every block. . The only thing that makes me feel a little better is to think that perhaps she didnt die in pain.. Rambos escape made him look bad and so he had to eliminate that insult to his own overblown ego. After graduating from high school, Rifkin, who was particularly interested in horticulture and photojournalism, made several attempts at community college and attended the State University of New York at Brockport, where he worked for a time as a photographer on the school's newspaper The Stylus. assessed at 128, but struggled academically in school due to severe dyslexia. And I didnt want to infringe on the investigation. Flexing his ego, he fired Sale and retained two new lawyers: former Nassau County assistant district attorney Michael Soshnick and his partner, John Lawrence. Rifkin found her on Jamaica Avenue in Queens and drove her around New York until sunrise, shelling out $150 for drugs at various stops. If theres a serial killer loose in your neighborhood, it seems like the safest thing is to be the neighbor, he says. Violet ONeill: ONeills dismembered body parts were found over three days in July 1992 in multiple waterways including the Harlem River, East River, and a body of water near Governors Island, according to a New York Times article. Excluded from team sports and neighborhood games, Joel was the butt of every prank and sadistic joke: bullies assaulted him in school and pulled his pants down, stole his lunch and books, and harassed him constantly. With 25-year-old Iris Sanchez, strangled in April 1992, he simply drove to JFK Airport and left her body in a vacant lot, beneath a mattress. Other times he killed them in his car. In custody, Rifkin soon began confessing to other homicides, a total of seventeen, including Bresciani. They also found a blood-stained wheelbarrow and chainsaw at the residence. Oxygens Serial Killer Week brings viewers inside the minds of the most notorious criminals of all time. With Rifkins detailed confession, investigators got to work. Rifkin was also able to hide in plain sight by switching up his modus operandi: Hedisposed of the bodies all over New York state, from a Brooklyn creek to an Orange County town, the New York Times reported in 1993. He is now in Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, near the Canadian border. "Joel was very calm about it," Mladinich continued. It was finally too much. State and local detectives found Balch's aunt in New York, who identified her picture this month. Neighbors recalled strange odors emanating from Rifkins garage, but they had assumed he stored insecticides there, for use in his garden and landscaping business. Prosecutor Fred Klein described Rifkin as a killing machine who acted in deliberate, premediated and methodical ways to carry out his gruesome murders, The New York Times reported in 1994. New York: Pocket Books, 2001. The 23-year-oldwas wearing only a T-shirt. They talked about trial strategy and how to present his case. June 29, 1993. My daughter was a very beautiful girl, Victoria ONeill said. Joel Rifkin murdered17 women, making him New York's deadliest serial killer. Known as Joel the Ripper, he murdered and dismembered at least nine women in New York. (Photo by Andrew Savulich/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images). Abandoned by the father of her two children, Evens found solace in drugs and worked the streets to keep herself well. Rifkin found her tricking on February 27, 1993, stopping for sex in an abandoned parking lot. Some were left abandoned in fields. (Photo by Neil Schneider/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images), "When we first started talking, it was kind of awkward," said Mladinich. While Jan and Jeanne stayed mostly silent during the court proceedings, even as reporters staked out their now-infamous home, his sister did speak to New York Post reporter Andrea Peyser. They were probably alone on the streets, but not in the world.. At some point in the litany, Rifkin asked DeLuca if she wanted to die, and she allegedly said yes. MADHATTERDESIGN@GMAIL.COM, Like old school VHS Covers? We have to be more aware when we see people who have been exposed to so much meanness, so much emotional brutality, physical brutality. Rambo earned his Airborne Ranger Wings in May of 1966. Credit: AP/Pool Photo/ Bill Turnbull. A peek inside the tarp revealed a womans decomposing body. They had destroyed themselves through their lifestyle. While his mother was out of town, Rifkin and Balch returned to his childhood home, where they stayed for the night but Rifkin soon took out his rage on Balch, bashing her in the head with a Howtizer artillery shell and strangling her to death, as recounted on "Rifkin on Rifkin.". The confession and the evidence collected from Rifkins bedroom left him boxed in as his first trial approached in Nassau. He would be eligible for parole only in 2197, at the age of 238. We know Blackbirds fate today only from Rifkins confession, and from her diary stashed in his bedroom. WebRon Rifkin was born on October 31, 1939 in New York City, New York, USA. He dismembered their bodies and disposed theirremains in the New York area. (In fact, the latter name is spelled Aholah.) Rifkin called his plan a way of paying back a debt, I guess, and while the idea drew praise from some quarters --including prosecutor Fred Klein-- most objected to Rifkins inclusion of a Motivation Room where residents would be scared straight with photos of hookers murdered on the job. Each giant issue is perfect bound and chock full of true crime articles, artwork, letters, documents and more. In 2013, DNA evidence confirmed that "Susie," his first known victim, was Heidi Balch, a 25-year-old New York City woman who was working as aprostitute. "The only difference is that within 20 minutes, we started talking about murder and mayhem. Rifkin transferred to the state university at Brockport, a Rochester suburb, in fall 1978. Prison is where he belongs, Rifkin says in the special. Five months later, Seinfeld mined his crimes for material. After the pair spent the night, once again at his mothers home, Rifkin beat her with a table leg and strangled her to death, according to Biography. The crowd stops cheering and squirm, while Elaine does damage control. The whole focus of my life, he later said, was on the streets. Even there he proved inept, robbed by hookers or their pimps at least a dozen times. Rifkin could not recall the name of number six, murdered a few days shy of Christmas 1991. To have the normal picket fence and three kids and a dog and a cat and get on with life. "He always seemed like he was slower or a step behind," Fred Reiter, who lived next door to Rifkin in East Meadow, New Yorkgrowing up, recalls in the special. Joel Rifkin was one of the worst serial killers in New York's history, suspected of killing as many as 17 women between 1989 and 1993. WebRifkin was found guilty of nine murders in 1994 and sentenced to 203 years to life. She vowed at the time to be present in the courtroom to let Rifkin and others know that the victims had been more than sex workers. It also left Rifkin with a new problem. Another colleague chimes in, adding Hey, Elaine, listen. She was actually a woman named Heidi Balch, who had used various identities throughout the years. A childless couple from Upstate New York, Bernard and Jeanne Rifkin, adopted him on Valentines Day and named him Joel David. Relieved of his little anxiety attack, Joel moved Bresciani into the cluttered garage, leaving her body in a wheelbarrow. He was vague on the details in later confessions, unable to recall the womans name, if he had ever known it. Before Rifkin left for college, he drove to New York City where he picked up a sex worker for the first time.

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