Rambo hasnt died and he hasnt found some sort of peace in his life that means hes going to stop fighting. 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. Graduating near the bottom of his class in 1977, Joel Rifkin looked forward to college and adulthood. To have the normal picket fence and three kids and a dog and a cat and get on with life. (Photo by Andrew Savulich/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images). On March 5, 1989, a member of the Hopewell Valley Golf Club sliced his ball into the woods along the seventh green and found the can containing Susies head. Rifkin refused, strangling her when she started to cry. 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. When asked about the body, Rifkin said, She was a prostitute. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Your IP: Long Island psychiatrist Barbara Kirwin deemed Rifkins psychological test results the most pathological she had seen in 20 years of practice. Tragedy plus time equals comedy, so its been said. He admitted dumping two womens bodies in Suffolk County, but troopers continued to question him, Corcoran said. MURDER OF MICHAEL JORDAN'S FATHER EXAMINED IN NEW DOC, RAISING QUESTIONS ABOUT SHOCKING INVESTIGATION, Joel Rifkin, New York's most prolific serial killer, is the subject of a new true-crime documentary on Oxygen. Back at the landscaping lot, Rifkin stuffed her into an oil drum, drove her body to Brooklyn and dropped it into Coney Island Creek. A low-speed car case ensued for about 20 minutes, until Rifkin lost control of the car and crashed into a utility pole in Mineola, according to the paper. By unanimous decision, a New York appellate court refused to lift the lockdown in June 2000. Birthday: January 20, 1959 How Old - Age: 64 Recently Passed Away Celebrities and Famous People. Joel Rifkin murdered17 women, making him New York's deadliest serial killer. Her mother, Florence Orvieto,told The New York Times that she had been saving her Christmas presents for two years until she learned in 1993 that her daughters body had been discovered in a 55-gallon oil drum in Coney Island Creek in Brooklyn. Oxygens Serial Killer Week brings viewers inside the minds of the most notorious criminals of all time. Family (1) Spouse Iva Rifkin ( 28 August 1966 - present) Trivia (10) Compatible with Rabbit or Goat. Below we countdown to Joel Rifkin upcoming birthday. 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. According to wikipedia latest update, he is still alive. Would. He kept her credit cards and a wicker handbag filled with costume jewelry--so much, in fact, that the amount would briefly cause detectives to inflate his body count. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. 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. Good works notwithstanding, Rifkin had no luck in his bids to escape solitary confinement. He spent more than four years in solitary confinement before being transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Clinton County. Rifkin was booked at Hempstead, where homicide detectives launched a marathon interrogation. As he strangled her, Rifkin recalled, She did nothing, just accepted it. He remembered her murder as one of the weird ones.. All rights reserved. ", "There was always a fascination with strangulations. (Photo by Rick Maiman/Sygma via Getty Images), "If these crimes were happening today, I think the police would have made the connection quickly," he shared. This guy couldnt even count to 10. In his down time, idling between jobs and classes, Rifkin dreamed of becoming a famous writer, churning out fragments of bleak poetry. Rifkin started his own landscaping business in April 1991, renting space at a local nursery to store his equipment. 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. I want to get all these families together and I want everybody to be there in court with me, she said at the time. Mary Catherine Williams was number 13, Joels omission of her name confusing police and some reporters into citing Williams as an 18th victim. Called The Masseuse, the episode first aired on November 18, 1993. Oh! In Rifkins cluttered garage, detectives followed their noses to a reeking wheelbarrow, extracting three ounces of human blood. The odor from the truck was immediately overwhelming, Corcoran said, and troopers peeked in the back to see what was under a tarp. Then, as if in a fugue state, he spent the next three days working on his pickup, ignoring the summer heat and pervasive reek of decomposing flesh. Her severed head was found on a golf course and her legs were found in Jefferson Township, the Times of Trenton reported. Briefly distracted by a man who passed the car walking a dog, he almost let Marquez escape. State and local detectives found Balch's aunt in New York, who identified her picture this month. The body of Evans, a 28-year-old mother of two, was discovered in May 1992 by a family hunting for dandelions off County Road 51 in Southampton, according to Newsday. To learn more about Rifkin's killing spree tune in to Oxygen's "RifkinonRifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer" airing Saturday, April 10 at 7/6conOxygenas part ofSerial Killer Week. His employer at a local music store described Joel as a total piece of work. Rifkin!" That was an experience, because Joel aside from the pathological issues had some smarts about him, Lawrence said. On July 14 of that year, 31-year-old Barbara Jacobs was found, strangled and rotting, in the Hudson River; her body had been wedged inside a plastic bag, then forced into a cardboard box. Fred Klein,the major offense prosecutor on call, drove to the scene. Weary of the pain by February 1987, he took a massive dose of barbiturates and died after four days in a coma. "Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer,". 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 2018Newsdayarticle. Fifty percent of the proceeds from sales were earmarked for New Yorks Crime Victims Board, with inmate artists retaining the rest. He was charged with killing his ex-wife and her friend. "There are a lot of damaged people out there," he said. Mladinich, Robert. They called him The Turtle, mimicking his slouched posture and slow footsteps, seldom missing a chance to make him the butt of cruel jokes. "We kept asking him, 'What about this one?'" They enjoy helping others and are good companions until someone close crosses them, then look out! It was a life far removed from her affluent Long Island home where shed been a high school cheerleader. At some point in the litany, Rifkin asked DeLuca if she wanted to die, and she allegedly said yes. His other victims included Tiffany Bresciani, Julie Blackbird, Lauren Marquez, Mary Catherine Williams, Barbara Jacobs, Yun Lee, Maryann Hollomon, Leah Evens, Violet ONeill, Mary Ellen DeLuca, Lorraine Orvieto, Iris Sanchez, Jenny Soto, and Anna Lopez, Newsday reported. 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. Although Rifkin often hired prostitutes in Brooklyn and Manhattan, he lived in East Meadow, a suburban town on Long Island. This massive perfect bound Ted Bundy collection includes art, articles, rare interviews, documents, letters, transcripts and the serial killers entire FBI file. 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.". On the early morning hours ofJune 28, 1993, three days after he had killed Bresciani, Rifkin stashed her body in his car's trunk and headed down the Southern State Parkway to dispose of her, the New York Daily News reported at the time. "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. They also sought to suppress his initial admission of Brescianis murder, made at the time of his arrest, while claiming that police had lacked sufficient probable cause for a legal search of Rifkins truck. clothing, jewelry, drivers licenses, library cards, and credit cards belonging to approximately 10 women. Rifkin! she says, inspired by the name O.J. Drawn to the pickups bed by a foul odor, troopers peeled back a blue tarp and found a womans naked, decomposing corpse. Fred Klein, shown in his office at Hofstra Universityon June 13, was the lead Nassau County prosecutor in the Joel Rifkincase. Tune in on Oxygen April 10 to April 18. He was deployed to South Vietnam in September of 1966 with the 101st Airborne, which he would complete two tours of duty with. She had been the mother of two children. "Leah was not a throwaway," Evans' friend tearfully says in the special. Michael Ahearn, then the chief of the Suffolk district attorneys Homicide Bureau, recalled how Rifkin continually corrected him during cross-examination. 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. ", JOHN WAYNE GACY LIKED THE POWER OF DEATH, RETIRED DETECTIVE REVEALS IN DOC: IT MADE HIM FEEL LIKE A GOD, Oxygen's new documentary on Joel Rifkin is part of their 'Serial Killer Week" line-up. Lorraine Orvieto: Orvieto, 28, disappeared in Dec. 1991. This is the best deal on the site. He was born on January 20, 1959, the son of unwed college students who were not prepared to start a family. He was living with his mother and sister at the time of his arrest. Within weeks, Rifkin faced murder charges not only in Nassau but in the numerous other counties where he had dumped other victims. . The only 80s action star that would prove victorious against a 21st-century assassin is not a man but a machine. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Its like my own little nightmare scenarios, he said. Is Joel Rifkin Still Alive Or Dead? Why do people try to quit smoking for their entire lives?" Confronting them, she was first told that Joel had been detained after a traffic accident, then that he was jailed for a crime which the officers refused to describe. After wrestling her body into a plastic trash bag, Rifkin cleaned up the blood and signs of combat in his living room, then lay down and slept for several hours as if nothing had happened. Rifkin was arrested for soliciting a prostitute on August 22, 1987 in Hempstead, Long Island. The discovery of a serial killer on Long Island came in the midst of a year dominated by bizarre and disturbing stories here it began with 10-year-old Katie Beers still captive in an underground dungeon and ended with Colin Ferguson shooting dozens of commuters going home on an evening train, killing six of them. 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. 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. He struggled with confidence and lacked natural athletic ability, a trait that frustrated his father endlessly, according to "Rifkin on Rifkin.". Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Throughout the 1980s, Rifkin worked a series of odd jobs around Long Island, seldom staying long at any. June 29, 1993. They never kill the neighbor. He killed mostly prostitutes and drug addicts; he was convicted of nine murders, although he is believed to have killed many more. This huge, perfect bound copy of SERIAL KILLER MAGAZINE is chock full of artwork, rare documents, trivia and in depth articles regarding serial murder. But that all change in 1993 after Rifkin said he made a "25 cent mistake. 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. According to the documentary, Rifkin picked up hundreds of sex workersand he eventually left college before finishing. Except for his grades, Joel was the stereotypical nerd, in glasses and high-water pants with white socks. Corcoran had troopers take Rifkin to Troop L, located then on the grounds of Republic Airport in East Farmingdale where Rifkin was headed that night to bury that body. At the time, there was no more thought than stomping on a bug or a cockroach. Buoyed perhaps by that effort, in August 1999 Rifkin unveiled his plans for Oholah House, a proposed shelter for prostitutes that would include drug treatment, counseling, medical care and job training. In 1965, the family settled in East Meadow, where Joel would spend most of his remaining years. 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. They were so decomposed that no signs of violence were visible, and medical examiners had mistakenly concluded that some had died of drug overdoses, he said. 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. Joel Rifkin, New York's most prolific serial killer, is the subject of a new true-crime documentary on Oxygen. Elaine told her new beau he should change his name. "None of them were throwaways.". Family: He was living with his mother and sister at the time of his arrest. Joel found himself strongly attracted to one of the other interns, a pretty blond, but while he shadowed her at every opportunity, he never found the nerve to ask her out. Rifkin did not respond to a request sent to him at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora for comment for this story. The oil drum worked so well for Rifkin that he purchased several more for use as makeshift coffins. DNA tests confirmed her identity. He picked her up in the city, strangled her after sex at his mothers house and dismembered her corpse in the bathtub. A high-speed chase ended in Mineola, where he crashed into a utility pole which was located directly in front of the courthouse in which he would eventually stand trial. Curiously, though, the driver of the pickup did not stop. The prison van carried him past the high school where he had graduated 16 years before. She was found hours later by firefighters on a training exercise, but this time Rifkin reported, It didnt even faze me.. Joel Rifkin telephone. The crowd stops cheering and squirm, while Elaine does damage control. 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. Oholah, Rifkin explained, was both the Hebrew word for sanctuary and the name of a prostitute whose violent death is described in Ezekiel 23:3-10. On May 25, 1992, he strangled crack addict Anna Lopez, dumping her corpse in some woods off Interstate 84, in Brewster. A forensic anthropologist was hired to reconstruct the victims face, but Rifkin confessed before the model was finished. Before the day was done, Rifkin, now 59, had written out a detailed description of how he had murdered 17 women who were working as prostitutes. Hikers found her on May 9 after they spied a withered hand protruding from the ground. Lawrence said he paid an enormous toll, starting with the day of the conviction. WebJoel Rifkin, best known for being a Criminal, was born in New York, United States on Tuesday, January 20, 1959. Well, 17 girls thought that, and now theyre dead.. Copyright 2023 Newsday. or redistributed. They trade suggestions for a possible new name, and of course, they cant come close to agreeing. He kept the pills, along with Orvietos jewelry and ID, as souvenirs of the kill. Dave Insurgent, a member of the 1980s punk band Reagan Youth), and his final victim. He managed to completely slip by unnoticed while committing the most vicious rampage New York had ever seen,capitalizing on his own non-threatening anonymity and pursuingvictims who tended to fall through the cracks of society. Mladinich said he and Rifkin, now 62, wrote to each other regularly until they saw each other again in the fall of 1999. In case there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want you to spend your second life in prison.. Chainsaws, people screaming, fine. Right?, Oh, he was kind of quiet. I love these neighbors, he continues. They drove to a point near the Manhattan Bridge, Rifkin clutching at her throat without the usual preliminaries. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! He wasn'tcapable of that. 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. Joel 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 he is believed to have killed up to 17 victims in all. Leah Evans: The body of Evans, a 28-year-old mother of two, was discovered in May 1992 by a family hunting for dandelions off County Road 51 in Southampton, according to Newsday. The site he chose was an illegal dump, 200 feet off Rockaway Boulevard, within sight of JFK International Airport. "He said he wanted to feel some remorse or feel some humanity towards them. Bresciani, Julie Blackbird, Lauren Marquez, Mary Catherine Williams, Barbara Jacobs, Yun Lee, Maryann Hollomon, Leah Evens, Violet ONeill, Mary Ellen DeLuca, Lorraine Orvieto, Iris Sanchez, Jenny Soto, and Anna Lopez. Corcoran said it played a role in his promotion from lieutenant to captain. Simpson. For the first time in his life, he made straight As for two consecutive semesters, rewarded by selection for an internship at the prestigious Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay, New York.