Joel Rifkin
Encyclopedia
Joel David Rifkin is an American
serial killer
convicted of the murder of nine women (although it is believed he killed as many as 17), mostly drug addicted prostitutes, between 1989 and 1993 in New York City
. Although Rifkin often hired prostitutes in Brooklyn
and Manhattan
, he lived in East Meadow, a suburban town on Long Island
.
s. In 1965, the family settled in East Meadow, New York
, where Rifkin would spend most of his remaining years. A shy, awkward child, he was a target for bullies. He attended religious classes at the Sholem Aleichem Folk School, run by a secular group of Jews who did not believe in God. While at the school, he learned a little bit of the Yiddish language. He had an I.Q. assessed at 128, but struggled academically in school due to severe dyslexia
. At East Meadow, he joined the track team as a cross country competitor. A congenital foot condition caused him to waddle when he ran. Fellow track team members would joke that it made him look like a duck. After graduating from East Meadow 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 majored in political science. While enrolled at the college, he worked for a time as a photographer on the school's newspaper, The Stylus. He also attended classes at Nassau Community College
, where he only completed one course. During his freshman year at college, he was arrested for shoplifting a bottle of Kikkoman
soy sauce
, a charge that he pled down to disorderly conduct and for which he paid a $15 fine. While he was in college, he wrote a quasi-autobiographical book, The Frosh, which depicted the feelings and adventures of a college freshman that parallelled his own. He held down various odd jobs, spending much of the little money he earned on prostitutes. He worked as a merchant at several flea markets, a clerk in the records department in Times Square Stores
, a camera repairman at Olympus Corporation
, a clerk at a flower shop, and as an order-picker and tape manager at Record World. One of his landscaping clients in Roslyn Harbor was Sophia Casey, the widow of William Casey, the former Chief of the CIA under President Ronald Reagan. Rifkin started to show a profound interest in horticulture and, with the help of Owen Smith, the president of the Aboretum and the son-in-law of former CIA chief William Casey, started an internship at the Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park
in Oyster Bay. At the park, Joel was assigned as a groundsman to tend the miniature pines in the Dwarf Conifer garden. At the time of his arrest, he was working as a horticulturist as a temp for Dunhill Temporary Services and had also been a self-employed landscaper for four years, considering himself to be a horticulturist.
On February 1987, Rifkin's adoptive father committed suicide
to end the pain of cancer
, adding further to Rifkin’s depression
. Around this time, he became increasingly obsessed with violence, murder, and prostitutes. Rifkin was arrested for soliciting a prostitute on August 22, 1987, in Hempstead, Long Island
. He concealed this arrest from his family.
. Over the next four years, it is presumed he killed 16 more women. Sometimes he would take his victims back to East Meadow, to the house where he lived with his sister and elderly mother. Other times he killed them in his car. Rifkin has also been implicated in the murder of a woman whose severed head was discovered on a Hopewell, New Jersey, golf course on March 5, 1989.
Police finally caught up to Rifkin on June 28, 1993, when state troopers spotted him driving his pickup truck without license plates on the Southern State Parkway
. A high-speed chase ended in Mineola
, where he crashed into a utility pole that was located directly in front of the courthouse where he would eventually stand trial. Troopers detected a foul odor from the back of the truck. It came from the corpse of prostitute and dancer Tiffany Bresciani, 22, the girlfriend of Dave Rubinstein
(a.k.a. Dave Insurgent, a member of the 1980s punk
band Reagan Youth
), Rifkin's final victim. Rifkin had picked Bresciani up in his a Mazda pick-up truck on June 24, 1993, where she was working on Allen Street
.
During his trial, Rifkin was represented by Mineola-based attorney John Lawrence. Rifkin was found guilty of nine counts of second degree murder in 1994 and sentenced to 203 years to life. His first "possible" parole date is February 26, 2197, effectively making this a life sentence.
er Colin Ferguson. The brawl began when Ferguson asked Rifkin to be quiet while Ferguson was using the telephone. The New York Daily News reported the fight escalated after Ferguson told Rifkin, "I wiped out six devils and you only killed women," to which Rifkin responded, "Yeah, but I had more victims." Ferguson then punched Rifkin in the mouth.
Prison officials decided in 1996 that Rifkin was so notorious that his presence in the general prison population could be disruptive. He was confined to his cell at the Attica Correctional Facility
for 23 hours a day. He spent more than four years in solitary confinement
before being transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility
in Clinton County
.
In 2000, a state appellate court determined that prison officials had not violated Rifkin's constitutional rights by housing him in isolation. Rifkin's lawsuit sought $50,000 for each of his 1,540 days in solitary confinement (totaling $77 million). Had he received any money, it would have been subject to state laws that earmark most of the award for the families of his victims. Corrections officials say that Rifkin is now imprisoned with more than 200 other inmates at Clinton who are not allowed into the general prison population.
In 2010, Rifkin was interviewed by ABC
's Martin Bashir
as part of the Nightline Prime mini-series, Secrets of Your Mind. During the course of the episode, Rifkin underwent a brain scan to see if abnormal brain chemistry could have possibly made him more likely to commit murder.
television episode entitled The Masseuse in which Elaine Benes
is dating a man named Joel Rifkin and she hopes that he will change his name.
Rifkin was also mentioned in the "Criminal Minds
" episode "Charm and Harm" (120) as an example of a criminal who used the ruse of an amateur photographer.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
convicted of the murder of nine women (although it is believed he killed as many as 17), mostly drug addicted prostitutes, between 1989 and 1993 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Although Rifkin often hired prostitutes in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
and Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, he lived in East Meadow, a suburban town on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
.
Early life
Rifkin's birth mother was a 20-year-old college student, his birth father a 24-year old college student and army veteran. He was adopted by Benjamin Rifkin, a nonreligious Russian Jew, and his wife, Jeanne, of Spanish descent, who converted to Judaism when she married. The Rifkin family did not have a synagogue affiliation; Joel considered himself to be an agnostic, having never had a bar mitzvah. The Rifkins adopted Joel on February 14, 1959, when he was three weeks old. The couple adopted another child, a daughter, three years later. As a young boy, he was a member of the Cub ScoutCub Scout
A Cub Scout is a member of the section of the worldwide Scouting movement for young persons, mainly boys normally aged about 7 to 11. In some countries they are known by their original name of Wolf Cubs and are often referred to simply as Cubs. The movement is often referred to simply as Cubbing...
s. In 1965, the family settled in East Meadow, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where Rifkin would spend most of his remaining years. A shy, awkward child, he was a target for bullies. He attended religious classes at the Sholem Aleichem Folk School, run by a secular group of Jews who did not believe in God. While at the school, he learned a little bit of the Yiddish language. He had an I.Q. assessed at 128, but struggled academically in school due to severe dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
. At East Meadow, he joined the track team as a cross country competitor. A congenital foot condition caused him to waddle when he ran. Fellow track team members would joke that it made him look like a duck. After graduating from East Meadow High School
East Meadow High School
East Meadow High School is a high school in the East Meadow school district. East Meadow High School was founded in 1953, as part of what is currently the third largest school district in New York State. There are approximately 1,650 students in grades 9-12...
, Rifkin, who was particularly interested in horticulture
Horticulture
Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...
and photojournalism
Photojournalism
Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism...
, made several attempts at community college
Community college
A community college is a type of educational institution. The term can have different meanings in different countries.-Australia:Community colleges carry on the tradition of adult education, which was established in Australia around mid 19th century when evening classes were held to help adults...
and attended the State University of New York at Brockport
State University of New York at Brockport
The College at Brockport: State University of New York, also known as SUNY Brockport, Brockport State, College at Brockport, or the State University of New York at Brockport, is a four-year liberal arts college located in Brockport, Monroe County, New York, United States, near Rochester...
, where he majored in political science. While enrolled at the college, he worked for a time as a photographer on the school's newspaper, The Stylus. He also attended classes at Nassau Community College
Nassau Community College
Nassau Community College is a two-year college. It is located in East Garden City, New York, USA. The school is in Nassau County on Long Island. NCC maintains a nationwide reputation for academic excellence and ease of transferability to four-year institutions.- History :Created as part of the...
, where he only completed one course. During his freshman year at college, he was arrested for shoplifting a bottle of Kikkoman
Kikkoman
is an international company based in Japan.Founded in 1917, it is based in Noda, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. It is a combination of 8 family-owned businesses founded as early as 1603 by the Mogi and Takanashi families....
soy sauce
Soy sauce
Soy sauce is a condiment produced by fermenting soybeans with Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds, along with water and salt...
, a charge that he pled down to disorderly conduct and for which he paid a $15 fine. While he was in college, he wrote a quasi-autobiographical book, The Frosh, which depicted the feelings and adventures of a college freshman that parallelled his own. He held down various odd jobs, spending much of the little money he earned on prostitutes. He worked as a merchant at several flea markets, a clerk in the records department in Times Square Stores
Times Square Stores
Times Square Stores was an American department store chain based in New York that operated from 1929 to 1989. By the late 1980s the chain operated 12 stores in New York and 6 in Puerto Rico, and an off-price ladies' apparel chain, Finders Keepers, which had 15 locations. The New York department...
, a camera repairman at Olympus Corporation
Olympus Corporation
is a Japan-based manufacturer of optics and reprography products. Olympus was established on 12 October 1919, initially specializing in microscope and thermometer businesses. Its global headquarters are in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, while its USA operations are based in Center Valley, Pennsylvania,...
, a clerk at a flower shop, and as an order-picker and tape manager at Record World. One of his landscaping clients in Roslyn Harbor was Sophia Casey, the widow of William Casey, the former Chief of the CIA under President Ronald Reagan. Rifkin started to show a profound interest in horticulture and, with the help of Owen Smith, the president of the Aboretum and the son-in-law of former CIA chief William Casey, started an internship at the Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park
Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park
Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, which includes the Coe Hall Historic House Museum, is an arboretum and state park covering over located in the Village of Upper Brookville in the town of Oyster Bay, New York....
in Oyster Bay. At the park, Joel was assigned as a groundsman to tend the miniature pines in the Dwarf Conifer garden. At the time of his arrest, he was working as a horticulturist as a temp for Dunhill Temporary Services and had also been a self-employed landscaper for four years, considering himself to be a horticulturist.
On February 1987, Rifkin's adoptive father committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
to end the pain of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
, adding further to Rifkin’s depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
. Around this time, he became increasingly obsessed with violence, murder, and prostitutes. Rifkin was arrested for soliciting a prostitute on August 22, 1987, in Hempstead, Long Island
Hempstead (village), New York
Hempstead is a village located in the town of Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 53,891 at the 2010 census.Hofstra University is located on the border between Hempstead and Uniondale.-Foundation:...
. He concealed this arrest from his family.
Murders
Rifkin committed his first murder in 1989, killing a woman and then dismembering her body and tossing it into the East RiverEast River
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx on the North American mainland...
. Over the next four years, it is presumed he killed 16 more women. Sometimes he would take his victims back to East Meadow, to the house where he lived with his sister and elderly mother. Other times he killed them in his car. Rifkin has also been implicated in the murder of a woman whose severed head was discovered on a Hopewell, New Jersey, golf course on March 5, 1989.
Police finally caught up to Rifkin on June 28, 1993, when state troopers spotted him driving his pickup truck without license plates on the Southern State Parkway
Southern State Parkway
The Southern State Parkway is a long limited-access highway on Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York...
. A high-speed chase ended in Mineola
Mineola, New York
Mineola is a village in Nassau County, New York, USA. The population was 18,799 at the 2010 census. The name is derived from a Native American word meaning a "pleasant place"....
, where he crashed into a utility pole that was located directly in front of the courthouse where he would eventually stand trial. Troopers detected a foul odor from the back of the truck. It came from the corpse of prostitute and dancer Tiffany Bresciani, 22, the girlfriend of Dave Rubinstein
Dave Rubinstein
David Rubinstein was an American musician, the co-founder of the influential New York-based punk rock group Reagan Youth. He founded the group with guitarist Paul Bakija when both were in Forest Hills High School in Forest Hills, Queens...
(a.k.a. Dave Insurgent, a member of the 1980s punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band Reagan Youth
Reagan Youth
Reagan Youth is an American punk rock band formed by singer Dave Rubinstein and guitarist Paul Bakija in Queens, New York in early 1980. They are known for introducing the style of hardcore punk to the East Coast punk scene, but were also a part of the peace punk movement...
), Rifkin's final victim. Rifkin had picked Bresciani up in his a Mazda pick-up truck on June 24, 1993, where she was working on Allen Street
Allen Street (Manhattan)
Allen Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan which runs north-south through the Lower Manhattan neighborhood of Chinatown, and the Lower East Side. It is continued north of Houston Street as First Avenue, and south of Canal Street by Division Street and Pike Street. ...
.
During his trial, Rifkin was represented by Mineola-based attorney John Lawrence. Rifkin was found guilty of nine counts of second degree murder in 1994 and sentenced to 203 years to life. His first "possible" parole date is February 26, 2197, effectively making this a life sentence.
Prison life
In early 1994, it was reported that Rifkin had engaged in a jailhouse scuffle with mass murderMass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
er Colin Ferguson. The brawl began when Ferguson asked Rifkin to be quiet while Ferguson was using the telephone. The New York Daily News reported the fight escalated after Ferguson told Rifkin, "I wiped out six devils and you only killed women," to which Rifkin responded, "Yeah, but I had more victims." Ferguson then punched Rifkin in the mouth.
Prison officials decided in 1996 that Rifkin was so notorious that his presence in the general prison population could be disruptive. He was confined to his cell at the Attica Correctional Facility
Attica Correctional Facility
The Attica Correctional Facility is a maximum penitentiary in the town of Attica, New York, operated by the New York State Department of Correctional Services. After it was constructed in the 1930s, it held many of the most dangerous criminals of the time. A tear gas system is installed in the mess...
for 23 hours a day. He spent more than four years in solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
before being transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility
Clinton Correctional Facility
Clinton Correctional Facility is a New York State Department of Correctional Services state prison for men located in the Village of Dannemora, New York. The prison itself is sometimes colloquially referred to as Dannemora, although its actual name is derived from its location in Clinton County,...
in Clinton County
Clinton County, New York
Clinton County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 82,128. Its name is in honor of the first Governor of New York as a state, George Clinton. Its county seat is Plattsburgh.-History:...
.
In 2000, a state appellate court determined that prison officials had not violated Rifkin's constitutional rights by housing him in isolation. Rifkin's lawsuit sought $50,000 for each of his 1,540 days in solitary confinement (totaling $77 million). Had he received any money, it would have been subject to state laws that earmark most of the award for the families of his victims. Corrections officials say that Rifkin is now imprisoned with more than 200 other inmates at Clinton who are not allowed into the general prison population.
In 2010, Rifkin was interviewed by ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's Martin Bashir
Martin Bashir
Martin Bashir is a British journalist and media personality, currently with NBC News as a contributor for its Dateline program, and an afternoon anchor for MSNBC, hosting Martin Bashir...
as part of the Nightline Prime mini-series, Secrets of Your Mind. During the course of the episode, Rifkin underwent a brain scan to see if abnormal brain chemistry could have possibly made him more likely to commit murder.
In popular culture
Rifkin was frequently mentioned in the SeinfeldSeinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
television episode entitled The Masseuse in which Elaine Benes
Elaine Benes
Elaine Marie Benes is a fictional character on the American television sitcom Seinfeld , played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Elaine's best friend is her ex-boyfriend Jerry Seinfeld; she is also good friends with George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer...
is dating a man named Joel Rifkin and she hopes that he will change his name.
Rifkin was also mentioned in the "Criminal Minds
Criminal Minds
Criminal Minds is an American police procedural drama that premiered September 22, 2005, on CBS. The series follows a team of profilers from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit based in Quantico, Virginia. The BAU is part of the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime...
" episode "Charm and Harm" (120) as an example of a criminal who used the ruse of an amateur photographer.
External links
- Crime Library
- Adoption:Uncharted Waters by David Kirschner, PhD includes three chapters detailing his psychological interviews with Rifkin prior to and during the trial.