is joel rifkin still alive

New York: Berkley Books, 1994. Joel Rifkin Death Fact Check Joel is alive and kicking and is currently 64 years old. Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer Premieres Saturday, April 10th, 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, When police later searched his mothers home, they found a treasure trove of mementos that Rifkin had saved from his victims,including drivers licenses, their underwear, jewelry, and other trophies, according to a 2018. She would not be found until June 1993, when Rifkin drew detectives a map. I was just in complete shock that someone like him could be arrested for these crimes. Pittsburgh woman missing for 31 years found alive in Puerto Rico, School shooting survivor has emotional audition on "American Idol", exclusive 2011 interview with CBS-2's Mary Calvi. I couldnt put two nickels together, Rifkin recalled of those years, and most of what he did earn went to prostitutes. The murders spanned four years, and all the victims were described as prostitutes by Rifkin, though surviving relatives of several vocally dispute his claim. Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans. Graduating near the bottom of his class in 1977, Joel Rifkin looked forward to college and adulthood. Rifkin picked her up at about 11 p.m. on November 16, near the Williamsburg Bridge in lower Manhattan. June 27, 1993. Conviction was a foregone conclusion, However, and in the absence of a death penalty statute, he received the maximum sentence of twenty-five years to life. 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. A childless couple from Upstate New York, Bernard and Jeanne Rifkin, adopted him on Valentines Day and named him Joel David. For more on Rifkin, watch Oxygen's special Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer, airing Saturday, April 10 at 9/8c on Oxygen. Known as Joel the Ripper, he murdered and dismembered at least nine women in New York. EXCLUSIVE: In late 1998, Robert Mladinich wrote to his "old college pal" Joel Rifkin New Yorks most prolific serial killer. On February 20, 1989, Joel Rifkin perpetrated his first homicide by killing Heidi Balch in her home in East Meadow. He researched past crimes for details. The special revealed that while his mother was out of town, he brought her back home. By the time Rifkin found her, in the predawn hours of June 24, 1993, she was his second hooker of the night--his fourth within two days. Her torso surfaced in the Hudson River, wrapped in black plastic, while her arms and legs were found in a discarded suitcase. An odor in Rifkin's truck led to the discovery of a body. She was found hours later by firefighters on a training exercise, but this time Rifkin reported, It didnt even faze me.. Jenny Soto's family. These are not the kind of flimsy magazines or tiny paperback novels that you are accustomed to. ", Evidence In The Case Of Serial Killer Joel Rifkin, Explored, 'If I Didn't Kill Them, They Would Have Died Anyhow': How Joel Rifkin Evaded Capture For Years. Rifkin arrived at Attica state prison in February 1996, sporting a black eye from his first assault by fellow inmates while confined on Rikers Island. Because Kramer has no ID on him, the box office employee has to use the public address system. Is Joel Rifkin Still Alive Rifkin had his only real girlfriend in Brockport, but the relationship went nowhere, his paramour recalling Joel as sweet, but always depressed. Back at home with his parents, Rifkin tried Nassau Community College again, attending erratically, earning only 12 credits by the time he finally quit in 1984. She wasnt what they said she was, Gonzales said. It also left Rifkin with a new problem. New York. 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. Rifkin had reached the detonation point. Lawrence said he paid an enormous toll, starting with the day of the conviction. But his eventual capture was a total accident as the serial killer wasn't even on police's radar. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Seventeen women in total were murdered by this shadowy figure but police at the time weren't even aware he existed. Her severed head was found on a golf course and her legs were found in Jefferson Township, the Times of Trenton reported. "Where I am right now today, I know this is the best placefor me," he says. Rifkin was ultimately sentenced to 203 years in prison, where he remains to this day. Rifkin was AWOL from his part-time job at an East Meadow liquor store, looking for trouble. Joel Rifkin was an unemployed New York landscaper living a dark double life as a prolific serial killer claiming the lives of 17 women, a staggering total. In November, he pleaded guilty to the Sanchez homicide in Queens and to three more counts in Brooklyn: victims Orvieto, Holloman and the Jane Doe killed in 1992. 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. This is the best deal on the site. He struggled with confidence and lacked natural athletic ability, a trait that frustrated his father endlessly, according to "Rifkin on Rifkin.". The site he chose was an illegal dump, 200 feet off Rockaway Boulevard, within sight of JFK International Airport. The Joel Rifkin reference certainly grounds Seinfeld 's episode in its own time, but its the idea that O.J. 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. They cite physical evidence and Rifkin's statements in linking Balch's killing to him. It worked. Rifkin was bullied throughout his school years, an experience that left him feeling angry and isolated. He said he had demanded an attorney 20 times. It didn't help matters that he was constantly seeking his father's approval, too. 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. Well, 17 girls thought that, and now theyre dead.. Joel This massive perfect bound Ted Bundy collection includes art, articles, rare interviews, documents, letters, transcripts and the serial killers entire FBI file. Evens had been the daughter of a civil court judge and had once attended Sarah Lawrence College. alaw enforcement source told The New York Daily News at the time. One of the bullies who harassed him later called Rifkin an abuse unit. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson. There was ample room for Jane Doe in the barrel, safely hidden for their ride to the South Bronx, where Rifkin found a district rife with junkyards and rolled her into the East River. I couldn't function in the real world then. Rifkin drove the body parts across the state line to New Jersey, dropping the head and legs in the woods near Hopewell. "You think of people as things.". Orvieto, 28, disappeared in Dec. 1991. Joel Rifkin murdered17 women, making him New York's deadliest serial killer. Copyright 2023 Newsday. Back in East Meadow, Jeanne Rifkin found officers circling her house by mid-morning. Troopers detected an odor from the back of the truck. Tune in on Oxygen April 10 to April 18. With this information, they were able to identify even more of his victims, the New York Times reported. He used the next one on Lorraine Orvieto, a 28-year-old manic-depressive who tried to control her mood swings with cocaine. Authorities say 25-year-old Heidi Balch likely was the first victim of Joel Rifkin, who is in prison in New York after admitting he killed 17 women in the early 1990s. Lorraine Orvieto, age twenty-eight, was strangled by Rifkin a few days before Christmas, jammed in a 55-gallon oil drum and dropped into Coney Island Creek, where her body would remain undiscovered for over six months. Mladinich said he and Rifkin, now 62, wrote to each other regularly until they saw each other again in the fall of 1999. In many ways, it was almost like a tsunami.. 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. Rifkin could not recall the name of number six, murdered a few days shy of Christmas 1991. That first murder gave way to many more; he killed 16 more sex workers, often dismembering their bodies and disposing of themin the New York area. One week after he killed Lorraine Orvieto, on January 2, 1992, Rifkin went hunting again. Joel Rifkin Rifkin wedged Lee into the same trunk hed used for Mary DeLuca and dropped her in the East River. Is Joel Rifkin still alive Joel Rifkin was someone who was used to being invisible. In June of that year, he murdered Bresciani, a 22-year-old who left Louisiana for Los Angeles before arriving inNew York. He then dismembered Susies body and her remains were scattered throughout New Jersey. It was really unnerving., Marie Alonso, left,mother of Joel Rifkin victim Anna Lopez, shares an emotional moment with Margarita Gonzales,mother of victim Jenny Soto, outside of Nassau County Court in Mineolaon July 7, 1993. Rifkin had apparently forgotten the date of his fathers death and told police he murdered Barbara Jacobs in August 1991, although her body had been found in July. Her severed head was found in March 1989 on a New Jersey golf course, but for almost 25 years investigators were unable to positively identify the remains because Balch hadused various names and Social Security numbers. Driving into Manhattan, he consigned Blackbirds head and torso to the East River, then dropped her weighted arms and legs into a Brooklyn barge canal. By January 1996, Rifkin was scheduled to serve at least 183 years for seven slayings, with 10 counts outstanding. SERIAL KILLER MAGAZINE is an official release of the talented artists and writers at SerialKillerCalendar.com. 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. Following a traffic stop that led to a car chase by police, authorities noticed a. . 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. She liked dressing up.. He wanted to know why he lacked that empathy and humanity. In an exclusive 2011 interview with CBS-2's Mary Calvi, Rifkin talked about his killing spree. At age 33, Anna Lopez had three children by three different fathers, but she worked the streets primarily to feed her own cocaine addiction. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Do you think I need a lawyer?. Relieved of his little anxiety attack, Joel moved Bresciani into the cluttered garage, leaving her body in a wheelbarrow. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. What is the current air quality in Salem Oregon? If theres a serial killer loose in your neighborhood, it seems like the safest thing is to be the neighbor, he says. Rambos escape made him look bad and so he had to eliminate that insult to his own overblown ego. "And he kept saying things like, 'I killed that one. With Joel Rifkin, Julian Attaway, Robert Mladinich, Sean Ruane. Serial Killer Joel Rifkin Hewent to painstaking efforts to try to conceal the bodies, often dismembering the victims, placing their bodies in oil drums, or throwing them into bodies of water, he would later tell WCBS-TVin 2011. Rifkin launched into great detail about each of the 17 women he killed, even drawing maps of where the bodies were. Married to a pro football player in 1986 and divorced the following year, she had come to New York in search of an acting career, but wound up doing drugs and living on the streets. However, a drug problem resulted in sex work to feed her addiction, Newsday reported. Joel They opened the truck and found Bresciani. The whole city is talking about this monster Joel Rifkin, and I am dating Joel Rifkin, laments Elaine, whose coworkers have gotten wind of the creepy coincidence. Maryann Holloman, age 39, was retrieved from Coney Island Creek in her oil drum on July 9, two days before passers-by found the skeletal remains of Lorraine Orvieto nearby. Rifkin had been bludgeoning or strangling women for five years, dismembering some of them. The cocaine in her system prompted detectives to brand her a drug mule, killed accidentally by the rupture of drug-filled condoms in her stomach. Credit: Newsday/K. Before Rifkin left for college, hedrove to New York City and picked up a sex workerfor the first time. Within weeks, Rifkin faced murder charges not only in Nassau but in the numerous other counties where he had dumped other victims. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! It was hell from day one. ", JOHN WALSHS SON CALLAHAN EXPLAINS HOW HIS BROTHER ADAM'S MURDER MADE HIM DETERMINED TO CATCH BAD GUYS, Jenny Soto, a victim of serial killer Joel Rifkin. 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. Joel Rifkin is a serial killer who went on a string of murders in New York in the 1990s. 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. Known as Joel the Ripper, he murdered and dismembered at least nine women in New York. You dont even use a name, its just initials. Called The Masseuse, the episode first aired on November 18, 1993. "They would suspect a serial killer was on the loose and his car would have easily been spotted by cameras.". Rifkin's prison life In early 1994, it was reported that Rifkin had engaged in a jailhouse scuffle with mass murderer Colin Ferguson. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Rifkin, a former landscaper, was stopped by police on a routine traffic stop when a Long Island officer noticed his front license plate was missing, CBS New York reports. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa. Joel picked her up on July 13, 1991, and took her home to East Meadow for sex. Joel Rifkin 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. Wiles Stabile. Something about Joel Rifkin set him apart, an undefined quality that made him an immediate outsider, natural prey to all manner of bullies. "We kept asking him, 'What about this one?'" Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions Know About Serial Killer Joel Rifkin's Childhood Joel Rifkin had killed 17 women, and now he was driving around with one in the back of his truck. Her mother, Doris Williams, described her daughter to the news outlet as a struggling actress and former high school homecoming queen who had moved to New York City from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. When asked about the body, Rifkin said, She was a prostitute. He bought Williams a fix that night, then tried to choke her when she dozed off in his mothers car. According to the documentary, Rifkin picked up hundreds of sex workersand he eventually left college before finishing. The chase covered about 20 miles through Nassau before Rifkin, a landscaper living with his mother and sister in East Meadow,hit a utility pole on Old Country Road in Mineola. There were times he would come up with things about the afterlife, or an energy flow he detected leaving his victims, Lawrence said. Her body was thrown into the East River. (Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Archive Photos/Getty Images). They never kill the neighbor. According to Robert Mladinich in From the Mouth of the Monster, Joels fantasies included some bondage and some rape, plus a gladiator type thing with two girls that would fight to the death. In some daydreams he raped and stabbed women, but his fantasy victims were silent, just passive about it. After a 1972 viewing of Alfred Hitchcocks Frenzy, loosely based on Londons Jack the Ripper homicides of 1964-65, he fixated on strangling prostitutes. 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. He told investigators he dismembered her body, put it into various buckets filled with concrete, and dropped the buckets into the East River and Brooklyn canal. Her body was never recovered. Rifkin specifically chose women who wouldnt immediately draw attention if they went missing. His landscaping business had folded by then, his landlord clamoring for $700 in overdue rent. The murderous rampage of notorious Long Island serial killer Rifkin came to an end. Except for his grades, Joel was the stereotypical nerd, in glasses and high-water pants with white socks. When its Joel Rifkin, the name of a notorious New York serial killer whose brutal four-year murder spree ended when he was caught in June 1993, it was grim grist for an episode of the hit NBC sitcom Seinfeld that premiered just five months after his arrest. Discovered the following day, Soto was identified from fingerprint records of her last arrest, police initially suspecting her ex-con ex-boyfriend of the murder. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Rifkin had just arrived home when his mother demanded her car keys and embarked on a 30-minute shopping trip, with the corpse still in the trunk. He took really terrific photos and had an attractive artistic side. The couple was so happy with their son that they repeated the procedure, with a daughter, three years later. They were probably alone on the streets, but not in the world.. Some were left abandoned in fields. Mary Catherine Williams, 10 years older than ONeill, had been a high school homecoming queen and college cheerleader in her native North Carolina. They called him The Turtle, mimicking his slouched posture and slow footsteps, seldom missing a chance to make him the butt of cruel jokes. Some were in water. Rifkin responded to the news by firing Soshnick on the spot, leaving Lawrence, a lawyer with no criminal experience, to wage the battle alone. / CBS/AP. 202.3.109.12 A Jane Doe victim, thus entombed, was dredged from Newtown Creek, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on May 13, 1992. Arraigned for the Bresciani homicide on July 15, 1993, Rifkin repeated his plea of not guilty. Afterward, he drove Evens to the far eastern end of Long Island and buried her in the woods, the only one of his victims who rated a shallow grave.