Cold Case Files - The Rifkin Murders Part 1

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Serial killer Joel Rifkin took the lives of 17 women in New York before he was caught red handed in 1993. Almost thirty years later, after interviewing Rifkin for a documentary, a TV producer leverages his relationship with New York’s most prolific serial killer to get information police could use to discover the identities of Rifkin’s two remaining unknown victims. When presented with actionable leads, New York State Police revisit the case and begin a two year search for justice for Victims Six and Nine. Homes.com: We’ve done your homework.Marley Spoon: Head to MarleySpoon.com/offer/COLDCASE for up to 25 free meals!Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following episode contains disturbing accounts of physical and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. I remember a small creek. Is that where you put the body? Yeah. Joel Rifkin has told police he's a serial killer. Authorities in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have been searching the areas where Rifkin said he dumped bodies. Joel Rifkin's the worst serial killer in New York State history.

He was arrested in 1993 and confessed to killing 17 women. To this day, victim six and victim nine have never been identified. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. After three decades, investigators are following new leads in the Joel Rifkin cold case. The following depicts the 18-month investigation that started in 2021, with an unlikely alliance between Rifkin and TV producer Peter Rice.

I'm going to go all the way to the beginning. So I first met and got in contact with Joel Rifkin back in 1998. I was doing a science documentary, and it was about the biological causes of violence. Can your biology be a factor in why you become a killer? We had a sporadic relationship of letters back and forth for a while. And in 2004, I was doing a number of A&E biographies. So I reached out to Rifkin. I wrote him a letter in prison, and he responded and said that he would do a new interview with me about his life and crimes.

Hey. Hi. Appreciate your time. We ended up speaking for more than four and a half hours. We went through every single. single one of his murders. Was the second one easier at all? I only hit her once and we didn't end up

resting all over the floor. It was just almost mechanical. Rifkin has a very detailed memory. He remembers every single one of his crimes very well. So your final victim, Tiffany Bresciani. She had this sort of like love beads or Indian bead and necklace. and outbrook during the struggle and there were beads everywhere. After that interview, there was on-camera a complete record of Rifkin's killing spree

from his first victim through his 17th victim, and that didn't exist anywhere else. Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic, I had a lot more time on my hands. And I had been reading a lot about how a new technology called investigative genetic genealogy has been helping law enforcement solve old cold cases. And I started thinking about Rifkin again and realizing that there were these mysteries still associated with his killing spree. There were two women that were never identified,

victim six and victim nine. And I started to remember certain details that I learned from Rifkin. He had all of these trophies, all the clothing and jewelry and IDs and everything that he kept from his killing spree from all the women. or a piece of jewelry, okay, I know that that's from that girl. So yeah, it would help keep the sequence and to remember who was who and remember the events.

The police gathered all of that and have kept it in evidence in a shipping container that is at the state police headquarters for True Bell in Long Island. So when I started to put together the investigative genetic genealogy and Rifkin keeping trophies and the police keeping the evidence, A light bulb went off in my head where I realized that there is a potential there to get a DNA sample from the jewelry he kept to solve these cases of who six and nine were and get some answers for these families that don't know what happens to their loved one 30 years ago. So I wrote Rifkin a letter telling him what I was thinking, and he was receptive to it. Do I really think that he wants to try to help the families solve these mysteries?

He says yes, whether that's the real reason or not, or whether he saw this as an opportunity to stay relevant. No one can know but Rifkin. But we're never going to solve the identities of these women if we don't try. And it affects me very deeply because when I was 12 years old, my sister was killed in a car accident. And whenever I hear other tragic stories like that,

I want to help the families because I couldn't imagine not knowing. what happened to my sister. So the whole point of this mission to try to identify these women is to really give them their names back and give them their dignity and give their families

the closure that they deserve and the respect that they deserve. Just one month into the cold case investigation, Peter Rice speaks to Rifkin on the phone at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Denamora, New York. Number six, we don't know who she is, and I don't think she was ever recovered.

Okay, yeah, yeah. And then number nine, they recovered. But we don't know who she is. Okay. After the first couple phone calls, I really started to drill down with him about what details he could remember from six and nine. And immediately, he told me

that he knew exactly what jewelry he kept from victim number six. In victim number six, you kept jewelry of her. Right. Right. That's a very important clue. Well, there were clear plastic, fake quartz crystals. There was a very good chance that the police had that jewelry in evidence,

and they could potentially get a DNA sample off of that jewelry and use investigative genetic genealogy to identify who victim number six was. And are these, like, studs or are they dangling? I think they were hooks. And he told me that he wasn't really sure about where he disposed of victim number six. but he has some clues. I remember a small creek that I can't find on any maps near a railroad track on the other side.

It couldn't be more than 15, 20 foot wide. And mostly that whole road was recycling centers and junkyards. That seemed like a real breakthrough to me. This is good info. I need to go to the police and see if they think this is actionable. I reached out to the original investigators on the case that I had interviewed previously from Troop L. And they had all retired. I was eventually connected with senior investigator Sean Lammons and major crimes investigator Tiffany Atai.

This is the first time that I've ever received information from anybody in the media, specifically a producer for a major TV network. I wasn't sure what his motive was. He has a job to do. He needs to deliver something that viewers want to see. So that was kind of my initial thought. I go back and forth on what Rifkin's motives are. You know, he once said, I'm not 100% good and I'm not 100% evil.

So I don't know if his intentions are pure that he really wants to help families, or is it about him? Does he want attention? But the real true motive, I really don't know. Why is he giving this information and is it accurate? A lot of serial killers. they want to have control. So that was my thought, is he playing us?

But it didn't matter because we're going to look into it regardless. Maybe he is telling the truth. I've always been interested in major crimes. I started with the New York State Police back in 2005 as a trooper. And as an investigator, I've been kind of all over in the Manhattan DA's office, narcotics. And I'm currently assigned to the major crimes unit in Troopel, which is Long Island, New York. So when I was a little girl, I was around two or three years old, my father's cousin's daughter, she was murdered, she was strangled with a shoelace. And just growing up, I saw how that affected my family.

It's affected them throughout the years. That's what drives me to do this work. So everybody in Troopel in Long Island knows about the Joel Rifkin case. you walk down the hallways of our troop headquarters, and his photo and the news articles at the time are all over the wall. Senior investigator Sean Lammons is working the case with Detective Atai. I was always familiar with the Joel Riffkin case. I remember as a kid, I was in, I believe, high school at the time,

so I remember the news articles and stories. I am a supervisor for the Troopel Forensic Identification Unit, which is basically the crime team unit of the New York State Police. The Riffin case was a big deal for Troopel. Our investigators at the time did a tremendous amount of work and tried to find these victims to try to identify who they were. However, two of these victims were never identified. Number six was never found or identified.

As far as victim number nine, they did locate a body. However, her identity was never made. I couldn't believe the fact that I'd be looking into Trupel's biggest case with information coming directly from Rifkin through Peter, And that could really lead to giving two victims their name back. It's amazing to be in a long line of investigators that have worked this case. Investigators and detectives across the country, specifically New York, New Jersey,

were looking into the Rifkin case, you know, starting in 1989, not knowing who the perpetrator of the crime was. In 1989, Lieutenant Bruce Carnell responded to a call reporting a gruesome. discovery. I was a detective in Hopewell Township for approximately 15 years when I got contacted by our police dispatch that they needed a detective at the scene. It was a Sunday morning, cold misty. Two golfers were golfing. One golfer sliced the ball into the wooded area leading down to the creek. They walked down to recover the ball and they found the head there. The head was laying openly all her hair was intact. Her ears were not damaged

and her eyes were not damaged. But from the nose down, it was pretty much destroyed. The murderer apparently had cut from the mouth back up toward the ears and dropped the jaw down, pulled out, and extracted all the teeth. We had the New Jersey

forensic scientists come in who reconstructed the jaw for us so we could get composite artists to give us a rendation of what exactly the head looked like. like, but no one was able to make identification. About a month after we found the head, it was opening day of fishing season.

Two fishermen were in the area, and they looked over and there was a pair of legs that were hung up in the stream. So we requested DNA samples from the legs, and we submitted DNA samples from our head, and we had a match that they were the same person. We expanded our investigation for New York. for New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware,

and checked with their agencies and any ones that may have had similar open cases. And we continued to get daily, weekly updates on missing persons. We followed up leads as far as Florida, but basically went cold. After we had run into a lot of dead ends, we contacted the FBI profiling unit.

Profiling was fairly new in law enforcement at that time. law enforcement at that time, but any tool that I could find I would use to get to the bottom of this. Greg McCray is a retired FBI special agent. At that time, there were maybe seven to at most 12 of us in the profiling unit. And I had the East Coast of the United States, so the call found its way to me. We identified victims through dental records. Whoever had decapitated this victim had physically removed the teeth.

It takes someone who is coldly psychopathic, and by that I mean no guilt, no empathy, no remorse. Somebody who damn well knows what they're doing and knows it's wrong and trying desperately to not get caught. Thought they were dealing with a white male, 20 to 30 years of age, single, probably living alone, just as somebody with a car. Could have an occupation that involved travel, construction, landscaping, May not have killed before, but he's definitely going to kill again. Robert Mladenich is a retired New York detective and Joe Rifkin biographer. The late 1980s, early 1990s was an absolutely wild time in New York City. The cracked epidemic swept through New York City like a scourge,

and everything seemed to change overnight. It was an incredibly difficult time to be a police. officer. I think one of the reasons, probably the key reason, Rifkin was able to continue was the city was completely unmanageable and out of control. Rifkin's second victim was Julie Blackbird. He picked her up in Lower Manhattan, took her to his home on Long Island when his mother was away, bludgeoned her with a table leg, and then chopped up the body in the basement as he did with the first one, and put

took the body parts in boxes with cement and dumped them in various waterways around the New York City area. She's never been found. After he killed a second victim, police had no idea that a repeat killer was on the loose or was in the middle of a killing spree. About four months after Rifkin's second murder, he picked up his third victim, Barbara Jacobs in New York City. he bludgeoned her to death while she was sleeping. Literally hours after Rifkin disposed of his third victim in Hudson River, the fire department was doing some training downriver and found the body. A couple months later, Rifkin's fourth victim, Mary Ellen DeLucah,

was found off the side of the road in Cornwall, New York, about an hour north of New York City. And Victim 5, Young Lee, was found floating in the East River. There were a lot of reasons why these cases weren't connected. Back then, there was really no collaboration between the police in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, or Queens. And you have to remember, there were 2,000-plus murders a year in New York City. All of the victims were sex workers. They're consistently one of the most disenfranchised sector of society.

At this point, Rifkin's murders did accelerate. He was killing women every couple weeks or every couple months. Rifkin had vowed to stop many times along his killing spree. He would have these urges and he would fend them off, but eventually they became too intense and he killed again. It was out of control. More dead women were recovered in and around New York City until he was finally arrested.

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during those years. As Rifkin's killing spree continued, more bodies started showing up around the New York City area. But there were so many murders taking place in the late 80s and early 90s in New York City that the police weren't able to connect Rifkin's murders to each other. He put victims 6, 7, 8, and 9 all in oil drums and dumped them into various rivers in New York City.

Victim number six, based strictly on Joel's admissions of the police, police was placed in a barrel that he stole from a construction site on Long Island, and to this day has not been found or identified. Victim 7 is Lorraine Orvieto, and Victim 8 is Marianne Holloman. They were both found floating in 55-gallon oil drums in Coney Island Creek. Ramon Aguilar is a retired New York police detective. On May 13, 1992, I was in May 13, I was in. at the 9-4 precinct detective squad office in Brooklyn.

We received a call that came in of a possible body in the water, a body, and a barrel kind of bouncing in the Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens. The harbor unit showed up. They were able to get this barrel from the Newtown Creek over to the medical examiners office. They proceeded to pull the person out. I'd been on the job, I guess at that time, maybe perhaps 10 years or more,

and I had to run out of the room. I was about to get sick. The poor person's body was covered with soot. Her fingers were disintegrated. Her toes were gone. Her facial features were not there no more. You know, it was almost skeletal. The medical examiner stated that affixiation appeared to be what caused her death. I remember other members of the 9-40 attack squad told me,

says, Ray, we got two more. I go, we got two more girls in barrels and, yeah, in Coney Island. And I was like, taking her back. I was like, wow. They were what we know now to be victim number seven and eight. My girl was victim number nine. I said, I think we have a problem with a serial killer.

They were like, let's tape that down a little bit. They didn't want to panic the citizens of New York. But my feeling was that that's what we had on our hands. After he killed his ninth victim, Rifkin went on to kill eight more women. women in about a year. Anna Lopez, Iris Sanchez, Violet O'Neill, Mary Catherine Williams, Jenny Soto, Leah Evans, and Lauren Marquez, and his killing spree would have kept going. But it all came to an end in June 1993. Over four years into Rifkin's killing spree, investigator Sean Ruein is on patrol.

It was an extremely quiet night. The road was desolate. We just were driving, checking the parkway, doing the usual routine stuff. We noticed a pickup truck in the center lane, and as we got closer, we realized that there was no license plate on the vehicle. If we turned on the overhead lights, actually hit the siren to let him know that we're behind him, and he was to pull over, but he just kept driving,

and that's when I initiated the pursuit. It went on for about 20 minutes or something. At one point, he did have the truck up on two wheels, and I thought I was going to roll over. It came to an end when he went up onto the sidewalk and hit a light pole. It was stop. I came running up, and he was just sitting there,

and he put his hands up like this. As I approached, that's when I noticed the stench. We started looking more in the car. That's when we saw the quick glimpse. It was shocking. I was not expecting that at all. He arrested Rifkin with his 17th victim in the back of his truck. That was really the starting point for Rifkin to confess to all of these murders.

After Rifkin's arrest, Officer Rowan speaks to the media. Were you horrified? It wasn't the most pleasant sight. What was Mr. Rifkin doing? At that point, he was just under arrest in the patrol vehicle. Rifkin has told police he's a serial killer. His operation consisted of picking up the woman, having sex with him, killing them, and disposing them.

Authorities in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have been searching the areas where Rifkin said he dumped bodies. Joel Rifkin led police to two more bodies on Tuesday. He claims to have killed 17 prostitutes over the last few years. This is the truck. Brings back a lot of memories for that night and how it changed everything. Routine traffic stops were never routine ever again. Once Rifkin hit the pole, the truck came to a complete stop.

We removed him, handcuffed him, placed him in the car. Then I went back up with a flashlight to check. VIN numbers and registration information. And then that's when I noticed the strong stench of decaying body and worked my way to the back. As we were shining the flashlights in the back, we could see what appeared to be someone rolled up in a blue tarp. And when we peeled the one corner back,

you could see the shoulder and head. area of a deceased person that was starting to decompose. In 2022, investigators Attai, Lammons, and fellow senior investigator, Steve Lauer, sit down to discuss the case. It's nice to see you. I haven't seen you in so many years. It's good to be here. It's like old home. Yeah, I appreciate it coming back. Yeah.

Stephen Lauer was the main investigator on the Rifkin case. He actually interviewed Joel Rifkin and was, part of obtaining the confession. Going through some of the notes that I found that you guys had back then. The amount of work you guys did on this case is incredible. Well, division brought down 60, it was maybe all told 60 of us working on this thing full time.

So was a task force? It was a task force, yes. During the night of the arrest, when you guys spoke to him, how did his confession go? Well, he's pretty matter of fact. I always got the sense that he just was getting something off his chest because he was caught And he was like, you know, why bother anymore?

He was not upset. He was very straightforward. We'd ask him, you know, how many have you done before? You seem like you've done this before. And he said 17. So you thought you had one body in a car and it turned into this serial killer case. After the arrest, reporters descended on the police station. Is the number 17, I cannot say that at the stage began.

His claim is that the number of the number of police. 17 president. Step back. Step back. Let these people throw. You must be shocked, Mr. Ripkin. Now coming. He gave him some paper and some maps that he asked for, and he wrote it out himself.

Everything he took from him where he caught them, what they had on at the pie, and where he dumped their bodies. He wrote this confession down and he listed all the victims and then he marked it on a map. He put in locations as far as he remembered them. His recollection was pretty much on point. I also found a book that had pictures from the search warrant. I'll tell you, it brings you back to that room. This must have taken you guys a long time as it's a lot of... It took a lot of time, and I remember it being very hot.

We went all through his room. Things were everywhere under his bed, on his dressers, in his closets. He kept things that we now know as trophies of the victims, jewelry, IDs, bags, clothing. In the garage, there was a wheelbarrow there that had a large amount of blood in it. Rifkin claimed they belonged to Tiffany Bresciani. They had teams that signed to each victim number. Some of the driver's licenses were able to be matched through family members to some of the victims.

Debbie Sirla is the aunt of Rifkin's last victim, Tiffany Bresciani. Tiffany Brassiani was my niece. Tiffany loved music and she loved Mozart. She just was a very intuitive, tender person. In 1986, she moved to New York with her boyfriend. She was 16. I don't know if she knew anybody. That made her a very vulnerable target.

When the police reached out to the family and told them that Tiffany was murdered. Joel Rifkin, the family was heartbroken. I feel that the police handled it as discreetly as they could, but reporters, they referred her as the body in the truck. It just felt very demeaning. All of these girls were real people, and they deserved respect for that. Meeting with Senior Investigator Louder gave me more confidence

that this information is most likely legitimate because it was back then. He led investigators to unknown victims. He led to the location of a body. So all the information that he gave panned out. But after Rifkin confessed, he retained counsel, and that was all the information that we had from him. So all the new information that he's willingly providing now, it's a chance that the investigators didn't have back then.

We are one step closer from where we were in 1993. Rifkin's talking and he's giving information. So I'm hopeful that we're going to get answers one way or another. Looking at victim number six and nine at face value, victim number nine's easier. I mean, you have a body. Victim number six, you don't have a body. But victim number nine is buried in Hart Island.

within the jurisdiction of NYPD. So I had reached out, and they are attempting to locate victim number nine to exhume her and hopefully get DNA from her remains. So while they're doing what they need to do, which is a lengthy, detailed process, I'm going to focus on victim number six and following those leads to identify her.

I knew if I found the picture of the earrings that Rifkin was describing, that there was legitimacy into what Rifkin was saying. It wasn't like an ear start. It was a hanging earring. The first step was to go into the binders containing photos of the evidence to see if it was there. They looked like sugar crystals that rock candy. Okay, full disclosure, I've been trying to get my dinner routine together this year,

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Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you. when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. First thing that I did was I went to the binders that had pictures of the evidence and immediately found that photo of the earring that matched the description. That gave me a little bit more confidence that the information that Peter had got from Rifkin was valid.

And then Peter provided transcripts of conversations he had with Rifkin. They looked like sugar crystals, that rock candy. And any color to it? Clear. Clear, smoky. And are these like studs or are they dangling? I think they were hooks. But you're testing a 30-year-old memory.

When I was reading the transcripts, Rifkin recalled keeping a pair of earrings from victim number six in the beginning. But then he changed it to a single earring. I described it as like rock candy, but it was hanging from like a small chain or something. And then the loop. So it wasn't like an ear start. It was a hanging earring.

Okay, that's also one of the few things that's not in a pair. So it is just one earring? Yeah. Okay. One single earring. that's super helpful. The changing of his recollection, it throws you off. Then you start questioning yourself, you know, is he playing games with us?

You know, it was concerning. And then looking through the binders, I found a single earring that matched the description, not to a T, but it was a possibility. Investigator Atai consults with senior investigator Sean Lammons. Hey, senior. Hey, what's up, Tith? How are you? Good, how are you?

So I just got an email from Peter in regards to, the earrings that he was talking about. Highlighted here. These are transcripts between him and Rifkin speaking about these earrings for number six. So this was the first one. It was the first one. It was the single one. All right. It's kind of close.

Yeah, it has the hook. Kind of looks like a rock candy stick. And then we have, but that's a pair. That looks even closer, though. Yeah. I think it, you know, this fits a little bit more, but... You have two possibilities with a check on? Exactly.

But my gut feeling initially was there's probably some level of truth in this information that Peter had. So after finding the photo of the pair and the photo of the single earring that matched the description, I knew that the wheels were going to start turning a little faster in the investigation. The next step is we had to go into the evidence container to retrieve them. Going into the container where all the Rifkin evidence and case files are maintained has a a little bit of an eerie feeling.

It's so much more than just the container itself. It's years and years of murders. It's years and years of work. It consists of all the trophies that Rifkin kept from his victims. Jewelry, diaries, IDs, clothing, makeup, purses. What we're looking for is described to us was a single earring and a pair.

Hook-like earring with a, like, like, rock-handy of some sort. This one. Right, that was described as a safe of jewelry, so we definitely want that one. Yeah. Sounds like there's some jewelry in there. What I want to do is bring us upstairs into our lab. We'll cut it open and then see if we can find the two different pieces of jewelry we're looking for.

Rich Rivera is an investigator with the New York police. We want to minimize contamination as much as possible so that it's strictly the DNA of the suspect of the victim that we're trying to pinpoint. We'll open it up with a sterile scalpel on the table. We'll slide the whole thing out. Yep. You think I should take everything out all at once? Yeah, take it all out. I'll start with the big stuff first.

Yeah, we'll just try to be as careful as possible. When we opened up the bag, there was numerous items of jewelry in there, which we all knew belonged to some victim. It is pretty emotional to know that all those items came from someone that he had killed. These two here, that's the pair we saw in the... In the pictures? The picture is correct. These are going to be the definite pair. However, he describes a single earring.

What is that right there by the silver right there? This thing? To actually find the two items that he described was another big moment. We were able to know that we physically had them and that we could possibly do something with those to see if we had any DNA. Get an evidence bag, we can bag that one up now. Yep. So we then isolated those into additional evidence bags.

That way they could be submitted to our lab for DNA testing. Time has passed and DNA degrades over time. So it's a long shot that we're going to get any DNA. But science has changed. We're constantly advancing technology and we're in a good place where we could recover DNA where in the past we couldn't. And there was still hope that maybe we could find victim number six body if all else fails. Finding her body would be a huge break in identifying her.

So with the new information that Rifkin gave, he had stated it was in the Bronx. He had given a description of the waterway being narrow. as well as it being near auto salvage yards. So with those descriptions, I focused in on the Bronx River. And I wanted to see if we can locate where he dumped this victim and find out if she's still there. We will return with part two of the Rifkin murders next week on Cold Case Files. Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows.

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