Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 498: Joel Rifkin Part I - Addicted to the Night

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

It's serial killer time... this week the boys are talking about one of NY's most infamous killers, stalker of sex workers, and the butt of several Seinfeld jokes, the infamous Joel Rifkin.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. I want to set the scene. It's 1989. A young, talked Henry Zabrowski with his parents' exit showing of Ghostbusters 2 and the regal cinemas in Jamaica, Queens. It's just like the origin story of Bruce Wayne. As we were walking down that alleyway, my father and his top hat, my mother in her fur coat, and I in a Ghostbusters shirt and and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle jogging pants that are covered in pizza stands. Cool kid. We walked on the street and then they are hastily gunned down. Whoa. And I knew I had to take the streets back. You must.

By becoming the dreaded nightmare of every criminal in Queens. Enjain a man. Bringing Ajida to every fat fucking chicken farm anywhere from Ozone Park to JFK airport. Hey man, let's get the heck out of here. Enjain a man's around. Yeah, you want to come closer because if not, I'm gonna take away his ant-tech. It ain't easy being a criminal anymore. Welcome. Regal Park, Ozone Park, Woodhaven, Queens. This is all about my town, my fucking city, my fucking decade. The last podcast on the left everyone. Fuck city field man. Fuck that fucking new ass shit. Hanging out with Enjain a man, Henry Zabrowski and Marcus Parks. Today's topic brings us to an era that can only be described as horrible. Can't wait to get into it. What are you talking about? This is my childhood. I know. Do you remember your childhood? Yeah. And what do you think of it usually? I'd actually, I'm gonna tell you what, honestly, I don't remember whole patches and years of it.

That's fantastic. That's called compartmentalizing trauma. Okay everyone, today we are on to a conversation about a man who I've actually, I'm quite excited to talk about. His name is Joel Rifkin and we're gonna get into it. Henry, is it Anjaina or Angina? Anjaina. Anjaina is that like, you know, you got fat gut and your gut is pressing on your fucking guts. And that gives you angina. It's on the inside gut. So you got your top gut. The meat that surrounds the casing of your gut is actually pressing in on your inside gut. I feel like Anjaina is a person who has a vagina so large that they don't have a taint. Anjaina is chest paints. Anjaina is chest paints and then Anjaina is, a lot of times they're together. Anjaina, Anjaina, it's all things for guys whose wrists are so thick they could barely get a chain on. I think one of the first girls I kissed in high school was named Anjaina. Beautiful. Isn't that nice.

That's how you know, again, that's how you know this crime takes place in Long Island. We'll get into it. Horrible. Joel Rifkin was an American serial killer who operated in New York City in the late 80s and early 90s. Over the course of four years, Joel murdered 17 women using a wide variety of methods and his disposal methods similarly changed from victim to victim. Sometimes, Rifkin would dismember the bodies piece by piece and throw them in either the Hudson or the East River. Other times, the bodies would be dumped whole in steamer trunks or stuffed in oil barrels or even just left out in the open. In only one case, Rifkin buried the body in a shallow grave. Every single documentary, every piece of media about Joel Rifkin, and there's a significant amount. There's a lot.

It's mostly because, well, Joel Rifkin, like, bumblebutt comes up quite a bit. Ed Kemper. He's a little similar to Ed Kemper. He loves the sound of his own voice. We'll talk about it, but he's a yapper. Wait a second. Are you talking about someone in 1989 from Queens talking too much? He talks quite a bit. I can't believe it. He is one of my dad's friends.

Not even an exaggeration. Bobby Franco is the guy that my father knew. Bobby Franco. Bobby Franco, who's big claim, who's trying to get everybody to move to Pensacola, Florida. Well, why wouldn't you? Because he said it was, that's the unheard of paradise of the tropics. Okay. And then his fucking house got wiped away by God because he deserved it.

Maybe, like, nature came. The Gulf of Mexico reclaimed his home. Well, that's always something to remember during natural disasters that perhaps some of the homes that were destroyed were horrible people. Yes, but he's got a rat-like face. There's a lot of material on Joel Rifkin. People have really studied him for a long time. And I wonder why, and quite extensively, and there's a part of me that wonders why, because he is kind of like the boilerplate serial killer. Yeah.

He really is. As far as victim type went, Joel Rifkin prayed exclusively on sex workers plying their trade on the streets of New York City. As a result, Joel Rifkin is New York City's number one serial killer when it comes to body count. Number one. At least he's number one amongst those who have been caught. I never sleep. You never sleep at all? Honestly, I do.

Medically, I need to sleep. You do. At least eight hours a night. But I'm just saying my hours have varied and long. I see. Is he the motive? Well, I guess the movie Maniac came out far before these murders. But it doesn't it remind you of Maniac?

That really creepy film, the original, of course. There are some similarities. Yeah. See, Rifkin was caught completely by chance, like most serial killers are. Because the time and place in which Rifkin operated was on par with Vancouver during the reign of Robert Pickton in terms of opportunity. Oh, you're not going to want to dismember her that way. How dare you compare Queens to Vancouver? Queens is the Canada of America.

Oh, you're not going to want to do it that way. I've heard that in Queens as well. Yeah, Lower East Side. I absolutely has. Yes, Henry, you're trying to claim Queens is where this entire story happened. Not even close. No, it's a Lower East Side. Not even close.

Lower East Side of Long Island, which is if you put them together as Queens. It's just New York City map. Oh, I see. That's an interesting color scheme. Rifkin's hunting ground was New York City in the early 90s, which was quite possibly the worst of the bad old days brought up so often by the New York Post. And crime happens to spike even the tiniest bit here in the five boroughs. But don't worry. That's why you have your occupying army there now, Marcus.

Yeah. And it's awesome. They got net guns and robot dogs and missile launchers. Awesome. And so we really come a long way. Don't you feel safe? Yeah. Do you guys imagine that those are like patrolling the streets at all times because I've never seen any of that?

Well, they did have the robot dog out there. And there's way more assault rifles than the air in New York City, way more than there is in California. You also live in, you know, you live in a relatively safe area. I do. I bet you more people in different areas see more robot dogs. Yeah. When I lived on the J train. The nice thing about the robot dog when they send them undercover to get drugs and they're like,

I want some drugs. No, it's like, holts, holts, you will be terminated. Oh, I see. But no, when I used to live off the J train, it was constant men with assault rifles. Oh, yeah. I remember. Fantastic. Well, specifically, the bad old days during Joel Rifkinsbury were a result of the crack epidemic.

And with crack came the highest murder rate in the history of New York City. In 1990, murders in New York City peaked at 2,262. For some perspective, the murder rate in New York City last year was 488, 78% lower, meaning our town has a long, long way to go before it returns to the so-called bad old days. Well, you guys are well on your way, and I think you're going to get there. I think you can get there. You can get there. You know, there's also one day we will do it.

I want to, we will do a whole series on the idea of the birth of crack. Absolutely. Fascinating. We covered it a little bit with our CIA MK Ultra. It's a tiny bit, but not really. No, it's a gigantic story that involves a lot of different people going all the way to the fucking top. I was going to introduce some information about that, but it's so intense. Well, as a matter of fact, Henry's digging in his pocket right now.

Look at that crack rock. Well, thank you so much. This is my lucky crack rock. Oh, I'm sorry. You just rubbed that one. This is for openness. I have this one right next to me. This is my other crack rock, which is for wish fulfillment and focus.

You know what? Honestly, if it was legalized, it would be just like that. A part of it, it seemed to, in a way, it's like kind of let New York get real, real bad. Yeah. And then dumped a bunch of drugs in it and then sort of use it as an example of why they would need an occupying army in a way. It almost kind of seems like it all was done in a purposeful way. I think so. You rip apart the classes in a not so subtle way of putting down the poor and rising up.

Let's see what happens. That's about one of, I would say, four to five reasons why it was done. Yeah. Yeah. It's a multifaceted octopus. I mean, you want to talk about the octopus of fucking malice. Yes. The octopus.

We got to do it though. Reason number three is just have a good time. I mean, crack is great. People love it. Sure. It's very popular for a reason. I guess so. I'd say it's the Dane Cook of drugs.

Absolutely. It definitely makes you act out. Regardless, when a drug as addictive as crack is being purposefully funneled into American cities, you're going to have people who will do anything to get more of it once the addiction takes hold. And when that situation arises, you're going to have a large increase in related crimes like murder, theft, assault, and high risk sex work. And since there was so much violent crime and so many murders, and since you had cops

making up a fair portion of the NYPD during this time period, the deaths and disappearances of sex workers didn't rake high on the NYPD priority list in the early 90s. I know you like. I know this is a pointed jab at my father. And he is a pointed jab. No, I mean, it's not that complicated. I mean, the nice thing about your father is it was like when he's C and double, he's like two cops.

He is a man that became a cop in order to avoid being harassed by cops. And what I will say, the best thing about my father is that he took a desk job immediately. And as soon as he could, he didn't want to be a bully. He just was a bully to his family. And so he got that out of the system at home. And then at work, he investigated deadly car accidents. So he was far away from all of the sex worker deaths being swiped under the rug. Very interesting backpedaling for Henry Zabrowski.

It's just true. We can talk about your family history. We can talk about Marcus's family history. We can. We can. We can talk about it. Yeah. We've all got our ghosts or skeletons.

At least we're one generation removed. Hey, I am. I'm fixing it. Hey, I'm like five generations removed. Don't look at me. Now, despite how Joel Rifkin might be portrayed in certain recent true crime documentaries, Oxygen, I'm looking fucking squarely at you. He was not some brilliant monster who was so clever and so smart that he was able to evade capture for almost five years.

A so-called invisible man. Every cop is obsessed with him being invisible. Right. Invincible. Invincible. They all say he's invisible, right? Like they were like, and every cop would talk like they were like, he had some superpower. It was like one dude who was like, this guy.

Yeah. He was invisible. Look at him. The law enforcement. He's like an octopus. You know that? Well, I can see an octopus. No, but it can change its skin.

You fucking know that if you went to the zoo. Wait, one time you fucking moron. Why would it change its skin at the zoo? Because it doesn't want to be seen because it's shy. I don't know. Octopus has changed. I'm trying to say. Octopus has changed the color of their skin, much like this guy.

He's like a lad and stealing apples everywhere. Can't see him if I want it to. He's got the goggles on. That's the dark man or the man who wasn't there. Invisible. Invisible. All right. Fantastic.

I was just going to say it's ironic that the network oxygen usually talks about people who are losing oxygen as they get choked to death. It is. Yeah. Fantastic. That is ironic. That is that you did use irony correctly. Yeah.

It's about 2000 spoons. Don't use it every time. You say it every time. Instead of Rifkin being the invisible man, he evaded capture because his victims were invisible. New York City had no idea that a serial killer had murdered 17 women until the New York Post put a picture of Rifkin on the front page with a headline that read, I killed 17 women. If you're just going to go out and say it like that, I guess you musta.

He's bragging about it. I thought he was some kind of invisible man being super fucking visible. I think well He's a hypocrite. Yeah, indeed. He's the he's the John Cena of serial killers. You just can't see him Well, in fact, it would not be any sort of stretch to speculate that Rifkin could have reached picked in level numbers around 50 Had he not been caught red-handed and the dumbest most mr. Magoo capture of a serial killer that I've ever heard Wow However to be absolutely fair many of the women Joel killed were never even reported missing by anyone Nor were some of their bodies found before Joel directed police to their location For example, his first victim wasn't reported missing until after Joel Rifkin was caught That was five years after her death and disappearance that someone finally got around to noticing

Heidi ain't around no more It's just an elongated version of home alone where they're counting the kids on the plane and they're like It's like how long does it take before you realize this woman is gone Well, Joel Rifkin specifically targeted those that were at their most desperate ends of their life. I think that is What he sensed was people that were already in his terms and even said that yeah, was that he He was like they were gonna be dead anyway And so in his mind they we he specifically went after the most skinny the most obviously strung out on drugs the most Visibly sick and he would use that so you're pretty weak. Yeah, the most weak the most

The most separated from any sort of like source of comfort or security This is why if I was gonna be a serial killer and I killed sex workers, I would kill those Chippendale male dancers They're gonna give you a good struggle. They're muscular. So, you know when I kill them my real man You just want to pay to wrestle a man. No, no, you can't no Even though no one cared about the people he killed before he was caught New York City took notice after his capture in the biggest example an entire episode of Seinfeld released just Five months after Rifkin's capture revolves around Elaine dating a man named Joel Rifkin Which causes many amusing problems

Because oh yeah, and there's also a rarely replayed episode by the way, you don't see that one on TBS very often It's dark. I also love that episode because Kramer says at the very end. Okay guys. I'm gonna go do stand-up comedy And they're like good luck good luck Kramer. Don't steal my act coming for you Michael Richards Kramer Michael Richards is dead Kramer lives Interestingly as a sidebar during the scene in that episode in which Elaine proposes a series of first names that her boyfriend could change to from Joel She suggests as a safe bet the name OJ Just six months before OJ murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. What did they know about nothing?

But while the sharing of the name in the Seinfeld episode has more to do with the fact that Joel Rifkin Brutally murdered so many women it would be equally embarrassing to share a name with Joel Rifkin The human being who is probably one of the wormiest whiniest and most pathetic killers we've ever covered Really? Oh, yeah, dude. This story is you know Every person at this table has been brutally bullied on some level or another But this is the story of a person as one early friend of Joel Rifkin puts was called a they called him an abuse unit Which was he was you that he was the type of guy that not only was naturally bullied by anybody who ever met him Because if there's something about him that it became a tell you big he was a walking target

But in the torturing of him he became even more annoying The cycle of abuse to continue and it's like yeah, this came from a big like, you know Buzz-cudded like mook from on island He didn't have the moment where he stands up to the bullies and becomes a man No, okay. No, he does not know we had a kid like that in our school, too I know exactly what he's I mean, I I don't justify it I don't say that's right, but I know what he was talking about like I'm no saint I there was one kid below me

I was second as far as like bully the bully rungs go Yeah, I was second there was one kid below me who I got to bully and then everybody both him bullied him as well And he was also an asshole. That was the other thing about that everyone bullied him But he was also a massive dickhead and isn't he on like your like state legislature now or something like yeah I think he is yes. I think he's uh, he's one of the people who want to do away with sodomy laws Bring them back rather there in Texas This is kind of what he's like. Okay. He is like that. He's a perennially a fucking pain in the ass that everybody hates. Yeah Rifkin is one of those rare serial killers in league with BTK who had no extreme trauma in their childhood when it comes to parental or

Familiar abuse this again completely blows the mommy and daddy theory out of the water when it comes to looking at the causes of Serial killing or at the very least it makes the study of the serial killing phenomenon less reductive It's not as simple as they like to make it. There's a really interesting documentary We talked with the woman that worked with him. It was the new documentary about BTK That and it's you talk with Catherine Ramzlin. It was a fantastic Fantastic documentary series. I love it. Well, Catherine Ramzlin has a way of putting it is that well that I think is really interesting Is that until she got that close that because they're very similar until she got the close relationship with BTK It wasn't fully revealed how deep and intense his

Fantasy life was and how early it started and that this is kind of what we're gonna see the same pattern in Joel Rifkin Where it is a I think that he doesn't didn't really want to talk about how deep and dark his fantasies were right for so long Because he doesn't want it because even Joel Rifkin in his own mind is kind of like I'm just some guy I'm just you know, I mean like meanwhile He's been thinking about like torturing and murdering women since he was four years old and you can listen to that episode on our patreon A fantastic interview and again, thanks to everyone who gives to our patreon. This is a great time to plug that just a great Most kids they most kids do the three two one They shoot the basketball into the hoop and they're like I did the winning shot

I did the winning shot, but apparently Joel Rifkin was like three two one He's like an eye choke Every childhood is different. Yeah, I wanted to be on stage Where Rifkin blames most of his serial killing on childhood bullies and society at large And while he admittedly did have a rough go of it growing up when it came to bullying He still chose to murder 17 women. Yeah, people who have had it far worse have murdered exactly zero. Yeah, look at Elon Musk. Yeah, look at He was bullied A roast as dark as the night

Perfect for fueling the cryptid research and mad ravings required for your podcasting. Don't mind the red eyes He's just trying to warn you of the bridge the bridge Finally from the caffeine-addled brains of Spring Hill Jack coffee and last podcast on the left Bre bring you moth men's red-eye blend. Yes Delicious Panama beans go to last podcast merch calm to order yours today Well for our source today, we've got an entertaining book called from the mouth of the monster from a former cop named Robert Malanich Oh, yeah, who briefly knew Joel Rifkin in the late 70s. You mean brief every Friendship is sacred

I remember Every single moment of our friendship In a way that I would write into a book that I would sell that we call also a very big documentary series for me as well Oh, you're officer Malangovitch. Yeah, officer Malangovitch. I know if you can't say you're drunk Yeah, all right, I might be saying it wrong, but I think it's a Robbie Mladenich Mladenich. Yeah But as a result of their short friendship Mladenich was able to extensively speak to Joel Rifkin himself Meaning there's not a lot of guesswork when it comes to murder and disposal methods

However, as it always is with the last living witness It's important to take Rifkin's claims and especially his observations about himself with a grain of salt I always love a serial killers version of themselves It's so funny because you can tell a lot about them what they think about their own crimes Right. See if I were to compare Rifkin's interviews with Mladenich to anyone They share quite a bit in common in tone with as Henry said add Kemper's disturbingly detached sessions with FBI profilers But where Kemper comes off as somewhat academic even highfalutin Rifkin sounds more like a Long Island regular Joe who talks about his murders with all the emotion and self-reflection

Of a guy who's recounting the last time he mowed his lawn Oh, you tell me people don't take that super seriously in Long Island and people will cry if they get a perfect mow All I know is is if I'm even an inch off with my HOA this one time they came around Mm-hmm. They grabbed my mother and they put her head in a fucking plastic bag It's like whoa, whoa, whoa. Can't we talk about this? Can't we talk about this? They're like if this grass doesn't come in half an inch the fucking bitch dies. She dies and I was like fair Of course, it's because I read the rules you did read the room. Um, but honestly, you know Just fucking kill

Just fucking kill her. Okay, just mow the lawn, please But that's the thing when you Describe this like I have such this a clear memory of the day that me and Carolina drove down to Amityville To go check out the DeFeo house and that neighborhood is this like I can just imagine that like that just Long Island Neighborhood all these guys are all there. They're all this. It's the same Fucking shmoo Every guy it's all it's just it's oh god this documentary was so triggering to me I've watched so many of these just

Oh, just I just remember being uncomfortably at the police station Well, my father and all them were doing shots and I'm playing the Donkey Kong game man Well concerning sources, I also have to note that some of the stories that Mladenich told in his book Differ wildly from how he later told the same stories in the aforementioned oxygen documentary Now it could be that he obtained new information after the publication of his book that brought these stories into sharper focus but considering how the editing in that doc was very choppy and

Obviously done for time. I think that Mladenich was more likely directed to shorten or sweeten his stories by a producer And considering how shoddy one-part true crime deep TV documentaries can be with facts and timelines We're gonna go with what Mladenich wrote It's not okay. Hear me out now. It's not lying. It's not lying. It's we're trying to make a good show here Editing make a good show here. It's one of the worst edited true crime documentaries. I've ever seen it's fucking nuts It's like watching an episode of 90-day fiancee when the fucking the glasses of beer go from full to empty to full to empty Over the course of one conversation. She found her man and now she's taking I'm sorry I was doing like a stinger from 90-day fiancee. They always do this horrible stinger

Um, but I do appreciate any documentary where they let the serial killer run his mouth because I just love seeing they're Oh, I like to see the way they recount the information 60-day fiancee. There you go. You fucking assholes I just made your next great show 59-day fiancee It really isn't that's really gonna turn up the pressure I mean, can you imagine Welcome to four-day fiance. You got a fucking venue yet. She started a year ago

Can you imagine how those two assholes from South Dakota would handle things if they only had 60 days instead of 90 I don't think space cash would have a hell of a whole lot to say and wouldn't be doing a very good job If they did poor poor space cash, man. He's fucked that pink pink cowboy is fucked I don't know so without further Space cash is the bandmate is I think Jabri is the name of the the man who dresses like a six-year-old girl That's what that was Carolina's observation he dresses Jabri dresses like a little girl I love that show So without further ado, let's get into the story of Joel Rifkin starting with his childhood

Joel Rifkin Hey, I eat the wing Enjoy your life Six yards of stoop. Wow six yards of stoop fantastic Joel Rifkin was adopted by Jean and Bernard Rifkin in 1958 who found Joel through a service that placed Jewish children with Jewish families This fact is interesting because it makes Joel Rifkin the only known truly Jewish serial killer outside of Harvey glatman Who murdered four women in the 50s glamour girl?

We never knew we know we don't really know No, we do know Berkowitz was it I mean people always put up Berkowitz as an example of a Jewish serial killer But his name was not he was not Jewish remember his real name was like Dick Falco. Yeah, Richard Falco. Oh Yeah, yeah, it's important to note that while both Rifkin and Berkowitz were adopted Berkowitz was not as I put it oh so long ago a mother vagina Jew mother vagina Jew means you get the card when you leave Fantastic, but the thing is that when you leave the hospital today, you get the you get the you're a Jewish car Yeah, so Rifkin just want to say Mazel tov Good job buddy breaking these the sandy cofax

But concerning Rifkin's adopted parents they seem by all accounts to be perfectly normal loving people with perfectly conventional lives Who adopted not just Joel, but a girl named Jan two years later, and that's their biggest crime Originally the Rifkins lived in Rockland County just north of New York City But just after Joel turned five his father an architect got a new job Which necessitated a move to East Meadow outside of Hempstead on Long Island Island, yeah This Joe claimed was the moment that his life fell apart Where in Rockland he had friends in a beautiful wooded area for exploration and it is beautiful up there

Long Island was a land of cruel bullies and unfair treatment. Wait a second. Okay. He was fucking five years old This is what we're gonna talk about What's four-year-old is like I got the gang with me. Four-year-olds don't give a shit He is such a little bitch that he talks about who's like those were the good days Back before I could think you were four and a half years old before I could experience anything That's when things were nice. Oh my man as soon as I had all these things like society and you were sick People and anything but my parents that's when things were bad. Oh for you I mean, yeah, basically when Joel's life wasn't absolutely perfect in every single way

He would bring it back again and again in his interviews is one of the many reasons why he became a serial killer And he used everything and everyone except himself as an excuse for his actions I and this is not an exaggeration Every single Inconvenience truly just an inconvenience that he had growing up. He has labeled as another reason why he's a serial killer Every thing there's no he's just he's just such a wormy little fuck that like he could have done anything in his life He could have done anything just feel another Seinfeld quote Fred G. Lee for that's that's from a Christmas story fantastic

You didn't say it right Fred. I think it's for a gila for a gila for a gila July Must be a talent well for example that's egregious No, that was a great mistake egregious Well for an example of a mountain being made out of a molehill when Joel arrived in Long Island He missed the cutoff for kindergarten By the time he began school. He was a year older than everyone else, which is somehow a tragedy from which there was no return On your head. No, I was set up and set back by conspiratorial powers beyond my Paperwork man. We just didn't I have been gained since day one also my my mother didn't put me into kindergarten

Until I was like seven because she just wanted to hang out. Yeah, and she breastfed you until you were like untrue That's a non-truth See, I told the truth and then you told a non-truth fighting so hard It sounds like it's true that how the harder you fight that the more true it sounds It just doesn't matter. I got to skip fifth grade because of it Breastfeeding no because I went to kindergarten late, but wasn't but was that did that take into account all of the times Your mother took you out of school because she thought the apocalypse was coming great thing about Catholic school as you pay to go

Yeah, so they just so they're just like I mean literally I was just like mom you fucking pay these people. Yeah Now to be fair Joel was bullied from the time he moved to Long Island until he graduated high school and considering some of the Interactions I've had with certain strong Islanders over the last 15 or so years. I've lived in this area I'd imagine it was particularly cruel Oh, they can be some point you wake up and you say today's the day and then you confront the bully And then you become part of the bully blob and then it goes down as you were trying to talk about it goes down hill But he didn't do it. That's part of that's part of mature every once in a while. The bully group is correct And this is and it's very rare. It's truly very rare

I mean, that's a you still shouldn't bully the weird kid no matter how annoying he may be You know why because sometimes you can turn around and fucking kill everybody Really need to actually these days. You kind of have to be like Oh, hey doing weirdo. I mean like you can still call them weirdo. You know, hey, you're fucking weird, right? You want a soda? Hey, you know, let's go. Let's uh, let's drive him once around our cool car so we can feel like choose the song Weirdo. Yeah. Oh, it's your day. Good. I won't learn your name. I don't want to know your name. No names weirdo Sullivan So they named you weirdo. I thought you knew we're just

We're gonna drop you off here. Have a good one. Not so. I'm gonna give you five stars on yelp But conversely being bullied doesn't justify murder or really any negative behavior that comes as a result of the trauma that all three of us Still bitterly harbour. Hmm. Now Joel believed that because he was immediately targeted by the class bully He became a target for all bullies from then on because according to him if you wanted to establish your reputation as a tough guy Your first step was to go beat up little Joey Rifkin Almost as if he was the glass Joe of his elementary school Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just round one on Mike Tyson's punch out I actually disagree with the bullies here. You got to go one step up. You can't just pick on the little guy all the time

I mean Joel Rifkin is incorrect. That's what I think. I think that he just viewed the he immediately decided this is what was me I'm at the bottom of the pack and you all put me here. Well, I think the optimal word is he decided didn't he got you exactly That's well, you know what? Oh, this guy would have loved Jordan Peterson I think he would have been Jordan Peterson's assistant. Yeah, oh, I do is eat red meat don't let you look like a fucking ghoul Well, Joe also believed that his intense feelings of inadequacy came because he failed his adopted father in his athletic abilities See Joel's father was a former collegiate football player But Joel said that when he was a kid, he had as much of a chance of catching the ball with his face as he did I was not athletic either

It doesn't matter my father watched me with my mother's dress around my head on the treadmill singing the phantom songs and yes Sure, he was disappointed athletic though But you know, he didn't see it quite like that but my father wasn't athletic either So right wasn't a lot of pressure. It was just more just like is he fucking reads like it was more of that vibe You know, I guess that's what he does. Yeah I mean, I could see Joel Rifkin's adopted father trying to throw the football to his son and his son's just not getting it and just his His father just sits there with his hands on his hips looking at the ground shaking his head just saying Jesus fucking Everyone has their thing though. I know someone in my personal family

My grandfather did not want any of his kids to play sports because he hated football because he thought it was too dangerous And then so that was a whole thing where's like I wasn't allowed to play sports. It's like I was forced to play sports There's no right answer here. I don't do not kill 17 women. That's the right answer But again, he's his father Joel's adopted father was kind of like he was a man's man But not he was the opposite of John Wayne Gacy's father. Yeah, where he he didn't like Zero in on his problems like he didn't start to like attack his own son the way John Wayne Gacy's father did But he definitely he just didn't know what to do with him like he's frustrated He was deeply deeply frustrated and you know, he was a pillar of his community

He made a lot of money. He was successful college educated like he was respected amongst the community And then your son's Joel Rifkin. Yeah, and it's just that like it's not like it's not like he became Joel Rifkin He didn't become the character of Joel Rick and it's like Joel Rifkin It's like he flopped out the pussy Joel Rifkin and then that's your son. Yeah yours your son. Yep Yeah, I mean, that's like the his dad would try to show him how to do math problems. The kid couldn't get it I think I used to cool openly we've during the math problem was all and now you know I have this little fucking machine right here in my hand that can do all the math problems for me teacher that lied to me I had a teacher who taught typewriting class and computers were gonna go out of style

Bitch you lied to me triggered. I am deeply triggered. But yes, I do remember when I got a high school teacher to tell me Well, it's not like you're gonna walk around every day with a calculator in your pocket. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Mm-hmm I'm gonna go kill seven Well, we never Joel would try to play sports with the other kids and this is according to Joel's mother The other kids wouldn't let him join in so Joel would retreat upstairs and watch them from his window Where he became isolated and weird. I don't want the world to see this guy's don't think they don't understand You know Rudolph became the leader at some point How many people what happened to him it's horrible the way they taught him again

This is how you know this crime happened in Long Island because it's it's horrible Good good all indeed. Wasn't that the song that you would sing to yourself when the girls didn't talk to you Henry? Yeah, but I didn't I didn't understand that I didn't need to understand that one day. They would see my value clearly I remember picking on the boy Well Joel's childhood nickname was turtle Well, he was always a little slow when it came to everything. Yeah, but turtle is the that's so Not bad. Yeah, it's not bad. It's not bad at all with Joe Even though he did have a supposedly high IQ about the only things that made sense were horticulture and photography

There were both things that he learned from his mother fantastic. Those are two very interesting intricate things. Yeah That being said even in childhood Joel claimed to have frequent violent fantasies By the time he reached junior high his most frequent fantasy was a reenactment of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy in that particular scene a woman is strangled with a necktie After she refuses the advances of a man and Joel said that he felt a particular joy and Watching the look of fear and desperation in the eyes of the victim as the killer finished the job I think that his fantasy life began very very early. Yeah, and he like This comes up several times in his interviews like he talks about frenzy still yeah, and it

It left an indelible mark and he never stopped and it just ramped up immediately as soon as he started thinking like this Yeah, but he just didn't separate like the fact that that's a movie and not real life No, I think it's just that his fan is you know, they say that these these fantasies don't Aren't created by movies or video games or TV shows or anything like that. It's just that when seeing it on screen It's solidified the fantasies that he already had he was already having these fantasies He's already thinking about it. It's just now he kind of has a go to you know It's like how you can always picture people in your head having sex, but you know It's always better to just watch pornography. Yeah, it can be and then Tiger Woods

He didn't know he was gonna be a star golfer until his father taped that putter into his hands Yeah, and then he saw oh Yeah, I'm a star golfer Tiger dad Yeah Now it could very well be that having constant violent fantasies rolling around in his head might have made Joel Rifkin a weird Hang because people can sometimes pick up on shit like that But even outside of Joel's inner world he made decisions in high school There must have been like fucking catnip to his Long Island bullies

You think it just gets to a point like are you doing these things on purpose? Oh, is it just about getting any attention that you can get? Yeah, that is something that was said about Joel Many times that he was all about getting attention didn't matter if it was negative attention or positive attention It's just all about attention at all. That's all I used to do That's why I shorted out the entire computer lab with a with one of those little paper clips Yeah, that's fun. That's pranks. It was pranks, but people were working on their homework and then they're Lost all my homework Homework and it really aggravated a lot of people but then it was a split 50-50 down the line a lot of people laughed

And then the people who were really trying to work hard at school. We're not happy It's weird. It seems to be almost a mirror of his professional life Oh and Joel's backpack fell apart when he was in high school He became the kid who brought a suitcase to school. Yeah, oh, that's not that bad either It's just a long island. It's hard to describe. I actually think in Long Island It fits in more than it would in Wisconsin. No, you honestly don't truly don't understand there It's very like it was there's something about an Eastern Coast school. There's something about that time period too. We're like cuz my bullies were like that too

It's just any single thing that set you off socially in any way shape or form that allowed you to like stand out at all They would just hammer you for it. Yeah, you knew that you knew the rules at some point You knew to not show up with your you know like with your fun new stupid nerd thing because then you just get The shit beat out of you. Yeah, it's just still it's not that bad. It's not that weird It's a high. I mean also with the bully thing like in the long out. It's like a hyper masculinity thing It's like everyone's trying to one up themselves one up each other as far as who could be the most masculine Who could be the biggest asshole who can be the fucking strongest dog? I don't know what's not masculine about a briefcase, but that's all I'm saying

Well, Rifkin then tried taking up violin which also got him bullied. I know you're gonna get bullied Well, I was told I was told I was too fat to play violin Yeah, the music teacher said he'd be like you're too fat no neck fat and spreads all over this the frets You haven't killed anybody that we know I've never won such an instrument ever ever since Oh, that's fantastic. And when Joel ill-advised Lee ran for student body president He lamented that he only got 20 votes, but that's my opinions that ain't bad at all for the school abuse unit It really ain't bad. No, it is not he had 20 people say yes Yeah, what's you to be our leader Joel Rifkin? Those were joke votes. So

That's what happened with Trump. I know but that's a problem. It is the problem Well from there Joel tried joining the track team thinking that joining would automatically give him a sort of gang that might Protect him instead. Well, the track team started bullying him Yeah, they gave him swirlies they'd stuff things in his mouth. They stuffed underwear in his mouth They stuffed a dead chicken in his mouth once. Yeah, yeah The dime drill I did some more Yeah, but it was also just because he was bad at running Well, that's kind of what I was wondering because he doesn't seem very tall

He doesn't seem like a marathoner. No, well, that's a thing the track team. You can always throw a kid on like the 800 or the mile and it's gonna take him a really long time to run the mile and then he's gonna He might if he finishes he gets the pity claps at the end. That's like You guys aren't understanding those are real claps. Those are real votes. No, those are real reactions You're soliciting Real human reaction. Well, I'm part of it is he knows that he's deeply unpopular Yeah, so the fact that he would go and then run for president on the troll ticket like literally that's what he did We're so he's leaving Joel. He's the troll. That's great. Again. He wasn't as good as that

Yeah, yeah Now eventually Joel did manage to get a girlfriend and in fact Joel never seemed to have a problem getting a girlfriend No matter how weird he got But when the track team found out about Joel's new relationship, they did their best to ruin it See Joel had a job at the library and one day when the track team knew is that his girlfriend was meeting him at work They've waited for him outside with eggs and cans of shaving cream now This is so New York that is so specifically New York because I had that happen to me Multiple times where they would threaten they'd freeze the eggs, right? So they'd go hang out there

It was rough, but they would you know again Unfortunately, you got to walk out and take it That's what the game is you got to walk out and Che Guevara that shit You really do when Joel ex did the building they pelted him with eggs and covered him in cream and his new girlfriend Just sat back and laughed Which was the end of that particular romance It's the definition of comedy having somebody smash an egg on your head Yeah, it's a social media meme now, but at this point she she was already in on the game and then he called his father to come

Pick him up. Yeah, that's also that is what else are you gonna do? It's just didn't help him Well, that's the thing is that that's a Mladenich told it two different ways in one way The they get he got covered in eggs and cream and you know and that was that and then the other version His father came and scooped him like he just wait He just looked and saw that they were waiting for him So he called up his dad and and he came and picked him up. Oh, yeah, I bet you the latter happened I could already I can see the latter happening. I can see him just staying inside His father came and picked him up, but then your father

Jesus Christ, he's got to walk through the line of kids with the eggs and shaving cream He's like you guys gonna you're gonna shave and cream and egg my son That's kind of funny His father could have stood up for him a little bit. Oh, he did multiple times Okay, yeah, they really did now they had to go and like they would actually his mother would go He would go like and talk to other parents and talk to other kids and say like just fucking give him a break Come on man, give him a fucking break and no one ever would Group of kids did the thing that they did to me where they pulled his pants down and laugh at his penis

And then he but the father then he went to the he was gonna go tell the school But then Joel's father was like I'll handle it and when to go talk to all the parents kids because he's also was like a big man So he'd like threaten them and then Joel went up all he went to all the kids He pulled on all of their pants and he looked at their penises and then he did have to serve some time But the message the message was given though Yeah, yeah Well the final straw when it came to the track team was when Joel admitted during a game of truth or dare that he liked a particular girl Yeah, you don't never do that. Don't give him nothing

No, yes, he did no because he was being tortured by them, but he must have been excited to be part of the game He well, well, that's the thing is that you at one point that like you have to drop out That's what I realized like I realized around like Six seventh grade like that's what I realized with my like when my friends turned into bullies after about a year or two of that I realized like I just got to drop out man. I gotta not have any friends I gotta be a fucking loner like I just like I just I gotta drop out I gotta not give him anything I gotta avoid him like it's that's just you got to drop out completely You're talking about you've turned that into serial killer training school, which is what Milanovic says it was that he spent so long

Figure on how to evade all the bullies Became invisible He trained his Every moment of his life Someone was coming You know how to avoid it and oh Officer McGlannabitch is It's uh, is it possible you just weren't looking for him because you didn't care about sex workers

Yeah, it certainly did this whole like invisible thing certainly didn't help him from getting scammed by sex workers for fucking years Upon years upon years. He was not invisible. We'll get into that because he didn't he did that on purpose as well Well after Joel Admitted to liking a particular girl He was shoved into the girl's locker room and got pinned against the wall by a shot putter while another kid wrote Joel's name and unspecified sexual phrases on the girls locker like but She's like oh my god Joel does love me

No, but he had to go and find his she because she didn't know that he had a crush on her So then he went into the yellow pages found her number preemptively called her told her hey, I have a crush on you and these men they went over there and they wrote But an S on your locker and you and the whole time she's like why are you calling me? Who are you first of all? Like I barely know you in the hallways like how'd you get my number and then Now she's bullying him You just need to just not the bloop me in Yeah, not to that incident dole Joel did fight back just a little bit by pushing a boy into a locker and threatening further violence

Okay, any little bit here. We go But even though nothing further happened in reality Joel's violent fantasies were only getting stronger and more elaborate as they often do with serial killers during late Adolescence, which is why you should always talk about it before it gets out of hand Just tell somebody even if it gets you into a square for a while like just tell somebody and get it out of the way Doesn't get you into a square there This is the definition of like I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill every one of you motherfuckers. What was that Joel? I mean, I do that all day in the comfort of my home. Yeah, well, absolutely

Well, Rifkin would fantasize about making sex slaves out of women all while he threw darts at their bodies or shot them full of arrows He had a piercing fetish and other fantasies. He'd make women fight each other to the death The way he talked about it though. He's like because Milano bitch He's like so in your fantasies is women are they always fighting to the death and he's just like no, you know, sometimes They'd fight them. It was like a competition, you know one pin the other. They're like it was something like that And they wouldn't always kill each other, but sometimes they would like just the way It sounds like the early 90s UFC fights they used to have Well, I don't think women were fighting at that point, but now they are and they'll kick your fucking. Yes

Strangely though Joel said that no one ever screamed in his fantasies Even when they involved the student athletes that made his life a living hell instead His imagined victims would always take the punishment passively Which I think further establishes the fact that Joel saw other people as nothing more than objects Absolutely, he could not he too can't see a personality in 3D. Yeah interesting Now after graduating high school Joel decided that he didn't want to go to college as a virgin Yeah, he's this weird like like animal house version of that's not I mean that's sexuality But that was fairly common. I mean, I think that's still a very common trope

I guess but it's like he believes he lives in porkies, but not really like it's a bizarre version Another part of his wrestling fantasy was he's like because my problem was is that you know, this is true This is from his interview. He's like my parents didn't really explain to me how the birds and the bees work So like you'd say that they were like fucking each other death My problem was is that I couldn't like I didn't know how sex worked So mostly I just kind of imagined them rubbing each other and like and just kind of figuring out like because I thought that You peed inside the woman. Oh, actually there was a kid in sixth grade that acts that that asked that question during sex Said they probably and then of course, obviously it was that the answer was no

Really trying to have it unless you're trying to have a real wild time there, but that's not how you get someone pregnant No, that's how you have a Jared Kushner So you're expecting his parents to well just before they have sex with each other be like Joel come in here You know Your father's a very important man. Your father's actually very well established man in the neighborhood So that's why I feel I'm the most Qualified yes show you how to fuck him up So you see here my legs my legs are like this Joel like this Joel What we do is is that I get on my back and stick up my legs and I get super hard your mother

She's my penis in her vagina, but she then backs her hips behind my ass So it's kind of like she's fucking me get it Get it. Fantastic Well since he had little chance of going about it in the conventional way Joel began his lifelong habit of visiting sex workers picked up off the street at 20 to 30 bucks a pop Now first Joel's pickups were relatively harmless and that he participated in a transaction of sex for money that any two Consenting adults should be allowed to participate in But eventually Joel became addicted to sex workers to the point where it was akin to an obsessive hobby

That took up to four hours each night when he went to troll the streets of sometimes Brooklyn and Queens But mostly Manhattan he is a lot of time the way he posited it was that he said that he was addicted to the night That is what he said. He's like there's something about the movements. He got the headlights and it's squish squish squish That's when there's things on the ground and then you hear the tingle tingle tingle. It's a rain and then It's nighttime. Yeah, nighttime and it's so dark and you're just like why am I wearing sunglasses, you know, I can't even see anything The future is not very bright No funny guy. Thank you

Well when Joel went out he would pick up a woman Interview her then decide whether or not he wanted to go forth with the transaction This according to Joel was standard practice in the street sex work game Which sounds much more complicated in reality than the quick pick-up drop-off scenario that we've come to think of it as Well, he would also like he get involved with their lives Yeah, which is true like which is probably good and bad because he would insinuate himself in their lives and then kind of like Like you really did show up all the time and became a known quantity in various I guess you I don't know if we even use the term red light districts

I don't even think that's how you do like what the term was I'm so poisoned by true crime documentaries this week Because it's all just like and he decided to go down to the hooker Hooker so many times the last week if I took a shot for every time I heard the word I'd be dead So he's like downtown Manhattan before it was all Disney fide and all that stuff well I mean that he's at the East Village is a big Pickup point for him like Allen Street near the bottom of the Williamsburg Bridge like Lower East Side He's going to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, which you know probably around like the Crown Heights area

And he probably went to Long Island City fairly often because Larry at Long Island City used to be like a big big pickup point For street sex workers, I think rather the bridge there But yeah, he knows all the spots, but a lot of a lot of it is Lower East Side and East Village But he is a template. It's so weird is to the to the fucking minute almost between Gary Ridgeway and Robert Pickton that they are very very similar was Kuklinski working at the same time in that area He was more like Graham Avenue right in Brooklyn. I thought he killed that random person in the Lower East Side He did no that was near Battery Park. That was on the West Side. Okay. Yeah, and then yeah He was in Jersey and Pennsylvania. I thought there was a lot going on. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's I mean

That's the thing about what I said at the very beginning of the episode He's got he's got the most kills of anyone that we know of you know Cuz what we do know we've talked about it like many times in the past brought it up many times in the past is that you know In the 90s in South Central LA they think that there were no less than five serial killers operating at the same time There's no and none of them were ever caught and so with 2,000 murders. Oh, yeah, there's no way There's not multiple serial killers operating in the area at the same right and that's just 2,000 murders because remember a lot of Rifkins Victims were never identified and they never would have been counted had Rifkin not

Led police to the bodies or had he not just said like yeah, I dumped her in the river. Who knows where the fuck? She is now like that Richard Marks song That's where sunglasses at night. No, I swear left her by the river I swear I left her by the bill All the songs that Kissel knows are all about death. No, they're not. It's death and then and the flag and the flag Oh little toes little toes, but I actually forgot that I forgot the lyrics of that one When sex work was brought down to its most basic function Joel said that's like an assembly line where the deed could be done within two or three minutes

Once he decided on a girl jeez for him this transaction was the perfect situation considering how awkward he was in conventional social situations That must have been the minutes but that must have been even awkward for the sex worker like literally like He literally would just get him in the car like he'd get him in the car And then just open up his pants and come immediately All right, like wow that was once he's decided on a girl because he would talk to him for a long time He would interview them sometimes. He's hang out with them all day long. Oh my goodness. He liked this is you know We liked them, you know, I get it though. I get the idea of liking. I understand that that's fine

He viewed himself But he said he was lost to the city that he would throw himself onto the mercy of the streets quote unquote Like that was his thing where he'd go out there and see what would happen and he'd mix it up Because he went from we'll talk about how little his life was in his quote-unquote normal life there He was a known quantity. It just feels like it's the Kentucky Derby with this guy. It's all talk all talk And then the fucking race is 90 seconds Sound like an old woman at the bar like I'll tell you one thing if you talk to them for two hours, they're expecting four hours of hardcore banging

Swear to these are not there two and a half minutes But I mean the more that Joel Rifkin looked at sex work as an assembly line the less he looked at sex workers as actual human beings And over the course of many years they became in essence disposable objects in every way It's like how some people treat weight staff like shit because they don't see them as people for him it was the expression of an urge and It was never about them It was all about him just like the naughtiness of doing the transaction

But once that began to grow stale he had a amp up. Yeah now after high school Joel attended SUNY Brockport Nicknamed SUNY Jockport because it produced a high number of physical education degrees Well, that's gonna be a great place for him. Yeah, the worst fucking choice. He can make Considering his Well, Ben you might be interested to know that SUNY Brockport was actually the alma mater of both Bill and Jeff Van Gundy. Oh, I love Jeff Van Gundy. That is fantastic Of course, one of the greatest coaches the Knicks ever had he's no Pat Riley But certainly a Pat Riley acolyte and he did try to take down Alonso morning, but he did lose no nobody cares

I care because that's why I brought it up. I wanted to give him that how do you reach these Keats? You look at him and you were like this I actually felt like I was kissles elementary school teacher or somewhere you drew two circles on the board He's like circles are kind of like boobies. You're like boobies, right? Benjamin you've made it. You've made a connection. Absolutely. You know, I did. Yeah, Jeff Van Gundy fantastic, and that's how we teach him geometry But even when Joel managed to somehow attract a live-in girlfriend during his early college years He still visited sex workers as often as he could and spent money He didn't have to feed his addiction as he put it

He'd get paid on Friday and by Monday. He'd be asking to borrow money for gas Oh, I see he didn't unfurl in I owe you be like that's as good as my that's as good as no he Just was he was addicted to this and I'll see a lot of this in the series I watch on YouTube soft white underbelly like there was a lot of that there were this idea of like whatever money you have You spend it fucking immediately on all of your vices and you blow it out until you have nothing That gives me so much anxiety. Just thinking about very scary in a specific example Joel and his girlfriend got into a fight because Joel spent $16 on an old photo of Teddy Roosevelt at an antiques Expo It's a very cool photo

Yeah, and his girlfriend flipped out because they were having a hard time even making rent if you can't make rent You don't have the disposable income for old photos of fucking Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, you just don't it's not in the budget this month Almost like a hundred dollars for that time period. Yeah, it's a little much. It's a bit much But yeah, but I'm 50 bucks. Yeah, what his girlfriend didn't know though Was that they weren't able to make rent because Joel was spending all his money on come and he'd spent 50 bucks Just the week before on girls and about this Joel later remarked quote If she knew a blue 50 when she's a banshee about 16 dollars, you know, whoa Well, I don't think it would be about the money then Joel

I think it would be all the women you're having sex with that aren't your girlfriend and I Relationship I do a big ugly man. Yeah flapping his gums Don't see a man who's not like me an adventure of the night Okay, I'm in the night. I'm on the curb. I go to the bodega Oh, but you have nothing to do with it. It's just the night you happen to be out in the night during the day It's blue sure, but if the night it's black. I don't it doesn't make any cooler, but I'll come back with a car That's a car make a car sound. No, you don't that's not my noise now No, you don't take my Hong Kong

That tells him that really does tell you a lot about him though Is that it doesn't register that his girlfriend would be more upset about him having sex with other women All it registers that she yelled at me about buying this stupid photo So she would be more mad about me spending money then she would be about you know having you know sex without a condom I'm actually a little bit surprised. He didn't blow his cupboard like oh $16 for this you should see how much money I spent on these women Well, he really upset like because he didn't seem to know that she would be mad about that because he's invisible But the truth is is that he was separating his life

Mmm, that was a different dude to him like yeah That's how he does like you see this from now on like that was all being done by somebody else That he was sort of like watching from afar in a way, right, right? Yeah, but because Joel was visiting sex workers picked up from the street and having unsafe sex so often He started developing a wide array of sexually transmitted diseases Eventually he had dime and nickel sized lesions on the back of his throat Which caused drooling and 104 degree temperature this as I know from experience is what happens when you first contract oral herpes Highly unpleasant when you first get it

But even after catching this embarrassing yet relatively harmless disease I got a cold sore right now and with a full fucking disclosure Fanta, thank you. So you're so brave about it. Thank you. I'm very brave about I got a cold sore I've got acne for the first time in 20 years, and I don't know why I do not look healthy You know what you are you're a herpes American absolutely. I want to say thank you. Welcome absolutely welcome But even after this whole fucking debacle Joel never slowed down his habit Well, it's cuz he acted like it was no fucking big deal like when he got it like he was like Yeah, I got this fucking thing wrong with my mouth. I'm like, I don't know what it's yeah

I'm having a bunch of unprotected sex with a bunch of sex workers that are filled with heroin, but I don't understand what I'm get I'm like sick. Yeah, like he couldn't bonus. I guess I understand now when Joel went to college He joined the journalism program and became a fairly talented photographer remember he learned photography from his mother There he met another journalism student named Robert Mladenich who is the author of today's main source? Oh Oh, see Mladenich was writing an article for a magazine called Hank Kaplan's worldwide box and digest We are covering it Dude that is a great magazine right there

Oh, yeah, man, and this and the article was about an undefeated junior middleweight boxer named Rocky Frodo He's going to be the number one junior middleweight from Long Island to Jersey City This magazine is ever covered. I can't wait to read the article Well, they go along with his words Mladenich tapped Joel Rifkin to take photos They're both a part of the Sunni Brockport journalism program So yeah, why not and apparently they hit it off like Mladenich was like no He's a good guy because they were both from Long Island and there were both kind of loners Now the boxing match itself was between Rocky Frodo and a man named Steve the fighting school teacher Michael Ray

Tell me this isn't your actual profession without telling me this isn't your actual profession Can you actually just put the fighting school teacher, not just the school teacher? Yes By the end of the match though Frodo was declared the winner, which was an unpopular decision with the crowd Wow Before long trash and chairs were being thrown into the ring and audience members tried climbing into the ring to beat The shit out of both Rocky Frodo and the judges Rifkin meanwhile tried hiding under the ring during the frocus But eventually he did poke his head out to take a few pictures of the mini riot Yeah, this is the you step back take the pictures from the back. No one messes with the photographer. I'm press

I'm press that'll get you out of that. You won't get killed in the war zone I think they still get killed in war sometimes Yeah, someone that journalist very recently got killed in the war zone. You gotta yell it That's why I'm press That's why if I got into journalism, I would be in the restaurant review group Absolutely Well this boxing match Mladenich said was among the last times he saw Joel Rifkin before Rifkin was revealed as a Serial killer well over a decade later, but I tell you what in the two weeks that I knew Joel

He'd become my best friend enough to read a full book about it, huh? Yeah. Yeah in any way you're trying to cash in on your relationship Hey, you say something I find you someone for two weeks Okay, well, I mean it did his tone about his relationship with Joel Rifkin did definitely change between the book and the documentary in the But in the book, it's like yeah, you know, we did this thing together and the documentary It's like my friend Joel Rifkin. My Joel Rifkin was a friend of mine And you know friend don't expect a friend of yours to be a fucking serial killer, you know, like you just don't expect that from a friend Like I had with Joe Rifkin. He's a friend my buddy. He's like the guy you go friend activities with like a buddy all of a sudden his buddy of mine

Only in Long Island, you're like, yeah, I didn't really like him that much, but I found out he was a serial killer He's my friend. He's a friend of mine. Well, I know this guy killed a lot of women. So I know exactly what you're going through Yeah Well, I mean at least the guy the other guy well At least the other guy in the documentary that they interviewed that lived across the street from Joel the guy who's now in the New York Skod jazz ensemble He lived across the street from Joel growing up and man he and he's in the documentary wearing his New York Skod Jaws ensemble t-shirt, you know, they've been around since 94 they've been playing gigs in the fucking East Village forever like

I haven't been sure this dude, but he was one of my favorite because that was he's like, this is the thing Right goes like would you believe my mom and this is true? She hired Joe Rifkin, right to cut the trees Thing is to be so tired out there living the La Vida hooker or whatever. He's doing he fall asleep in the truck He would fall asleep. What a story that is That's why he was on the documentary. Yeah, I knew Joel. He lives across the street from me. He's super fucking weird My friend Wow, that's crazy. That's amazing. And then you got some scottis thing for us I don't know how to make I don't know how to make these kind of fucking woodwind noises and then I go next day

But I go It's just such an offensive form of music Jazz Ensemble I don't even want to think about it. Well, he also yeah, he didn't just live across the street from me He did so like yeah, one time we was in the fucking low east side and I had my fucking instrument with me I walk and I saw Joe and he was in the fucking car and we's in there with his girl Fucking drove off cuz he was like kind of embarrassed that's not maybe like did he fucking kill that broad? I don't know But the thing is same time though. I didn't want to embarrass him while he was on a date

No, of course, you know what you have you have a big concert to go Yeah You can really tap your big toe to that I can't think anymore my spine was fused in Even though Joel had a hard time holding on to a job He did get hired one of the New York metro areas many record world stores Which is a music chain that went bankrupt in the early 90s Interestingly Melodinich pointed out in his book that while Joe Rifkin was completely calm and detached when he talked about as many murders He became quote

Downright unstable and overwhelmed when it came to talking about his stint at record world dude He could not handle retail what? He was sad when it when it what happened retails tough retails not good No, but you could live your life. He just fell apart But we'll go through it Now Joel was on a management track when he was first hired But he never showed up on time and he had no idea how to do accounting or paperwork Well, this is where it starts to build cuz he's like so I know I was like oh, this is a thing

All right, I got a day. I got away in a record world, right? But I know I was like I need some kind of career so I gotta get on a management track I think I get it. How did you get on that? I'm like, they'll love me look at me I wanted to be an assistant manager, okay Then I go from that did I go to main manager then district manager then I go all the way up the chain, right? I'm gonna do that. Yeah, but the thing was is that unfortunately what it seems to be is I cannot write on a piece of paper I Look at a four minute just sort of turns into spiderwebs and his he had some kind of learning disability

I don't know what it was. He was dyslexic. He was definitely dyslexic. Yeah, but it was a reverse of it It was like a rebirth of his high school shit cuz he's like next thing I know it's like I can't fill out all of these end-of-day reports So my main manager has to come and check it then the district managers now come in and they're all of a sudden I'm doing these reports and I get three or four guys, right? And they're all they're looking over my shoulder look at all the reports and they're saying like hey You gotta work on you got to fill out all these closing reports, right? And then and you know, I started feeling he had sort of remind me of my father and what I had to go through with my father Right, maybe a day labor job would be good for you. Actually. That's what he ended up doing. Oh, that's really yeah

He didn't he came upon that conclusion on his own According to Joel though in another example of the world doing him dirty He was fired from record world after being falsely accused or he says falsely accused of selling a friend an armload of albums Using Joel's employee discount Because he was like that's very nice to do actually the week before They try to I try to get another guy fired for doing the same fucking thing And I found out this 18-year-old was a part of the record workers union This is true

He was trying to cut sell people 15 standing out but said I knew this wasn't real and then they decided to call me out But he said the worst part was that when he couldn't close, right? He couldn't figure out how to close And he's just like I still remember I remember there was a few nights I remember there were very bad feeling when they're turning off the lights inside the store, right? We were in the exact middle of the circuit board, right? And then all of a sudden I'm sitting there with the safe and the deposit deposit bag and the lights are racing at you From the two sides at the point where I all of a sudden now I'm in total darkness

And I'd be sitting there with the bank deposit bag and the safe open and I'm watching the lights Race towards me, right? And I'm throwing everything in the safe And then I'm running through the store with the lights up because I knew I'm just late I thought you were a creature of the night That's what I'm outside the store Inside the store so light in there might as well be day You like to like me I just ask when it comes to having a friend purchase records with your employee discount

Why didn't you just buy the records and then give them to your friend you can then give you the money? Cuz I don't know what records he wants Maybe could ask them that oh Fuck yeah, there's a way around that But he never shows a minute of emotion talking about murdering multiple women. Yeah, but when it comes this Close up a restaurant or a small story You're a moron the way The borders was run by five 19 year olds five not just one Joel rift. There was a whole team there

He had all of his managers The only thing that's hard to close is a bar because you're drunk when you're closing that's true That's that's how I would that's how I got fired from the only bartending job I ever has because I was real good at talking to the people I was real bad at counting money at the end of the night Real bad about mixing drinks, too. I also didn't realize you weren't supposed to take the ones home You're supposed to cash them out. I did a series I didn't get I didn't kill 17 women

I'm glad I at least he's saying at least you say it. Yeah, well after the record world debacle Joel complained That he became physically ill and he started having angina attacks China my in China spiking and his chest you get chest pains I mean, it's not they need to change the name and you said and you said it was a long island thing I always thought the angina was like a Jewish thing Well, and China and China's chest pains any fact I can have in China for everywhere. You talking about my wife like that again I'll kill you Anybody can have him China if you can figure out a price

But an ajada is also a thing that the fat men get no Ajada, I mean now. What is ajada again? It's like when you what's a really good way to just explain it Like let's say I eat two chicken farm subs. Yeah, it's how I feel after that with the tomato sauce and the cheese If I eat like a pile of food right before going to bed and I wake up literally clutching my chest Okay, hey, so it's a combination of what eating that much food does to your body Combined with the anxiety that you get when you realize that what you're doing to your body is slowly killing you Yeah, or just the constant buzz of terror that most people live With life with on the day-to-day tomato sauce onions. They might trigger and giant very much. Oh, yes

Well, possibly due to these physical ailments Joel spent most of the early to mid-80s Unemployed and with what little money he could earn he spent everything on sex workers Using violent fantasies to get himself aroused but never quite bringing those fantasies to fruition As far as what he did with the rest of his free time Joel wrote an autobiographical screenplay based on his time at SUNY Brockport called The Frosh Ah Yeah, I'm sure it has shades of Richard McBeef, you know I actually I'd be kind of been at the time because you diner was coming out

There's a lot of like movies that were like of the moment I view that he viewed himself as a sensitive young man that didn't understand love and these you know It's that style. I don't know no one gets to how he's a diamond in the rough The froth sounds like a coffee company that has semen in all of its drinks calling somebody a frosh is something that's very Oh, that I have not heard in a very long time frosh. It's a slang for freshman. No, I know I Frosh No more my third eye is going blind That was the verb. No, I doesn't matter. They're all the fucking same

That lads my friend that's opposite different No, Joel began to fancy himself a writer after completing the Frosh, okay Well, he is yeah, I suppose so. Yeah. Yeah, and eventually he met an older woman and sometimes sex worker named Kathleen Deaver with similar ambitions at the pizzeria in Queens where she worked She soon ill-advised Lee hired Joel to assist her on her screenplay And before long a relationship blossomed and Joel moved into Deaver's apartment on West 49th Street, okay? however, Joel later said that they only had sex once right after they first met and the Relationship ended after Deaver stole a camera and two grand in cash from Rifkin or so Joel claim

Yeah, have two grand in cash. He did. I mean he would have built it all up because he did Intermittently work. Oh Kathleen Deaver though she said and this is what she told police after Rifkin was arrested for murder She said they had a brief business relationship and she had to fire him because he didn't do any work This I believe is the more likely scenario Yeah, it's very possible because you could have been a sex worker But we don't know and then he was trying to like he's all of his angles are all garbage Yeah, well and also they if you just look at his history

He has a long long history of saying yeah, I'll do that and then he doesn't do it. Yeah, he says he said I know He's like I have an undescribed mental illness and so everybody said I was lazy and an asshole But no, well you just then don't don't tell him you're gonna do anything. Yes That's the problem now around the time that Joel was screwing around pretending to be a writer His ever-disappointed father Ben Rifkin was diagnosed with fatal prostate cancer. Oh It's very sad horrible And so as he was dying he told Joel that he if he went to SUNY Farmingdale took one class and got a B Ben would pay for the next semester in college just dying on his fucking deathbed riddle with cancer and then he you know

Joel's being like hey dad, don't worry. I wrote a screenplay One year I went to college and he's just like listen, okay I'm son I'm about I'm about to go to hell, right? I don't know where the fuck I'm gonna go But if you can get a B in one class Because the whole time right I like that it's a B well cuz you know He's trying to manage expectations and also he said the big problem is that it's like my other family members did come in My dad when he was so thin from cancer and he'd give him a big hug with two hands, but then I

Knew when he hugged me He wouldn't use his arms at all He'd lay back and I'd have to do all the hugging and I know you're complaining that you had to hug your father Who's riddled with prostate cancer? He wouldn't hug me fully He couldn't Joel. No, oh my god hug me. I saw him use his arms on my brothers and then he went and they all my sister He uses arm on her. Oh my god. I could get this B Like to get this. It's just a B in any class and it well that he took the challenge He enrolled in a biology course

He took too hard of a he took too hard of a class that well That's the thing and in a case of what seems like I would call it a spiteful suicide At least when it comes to timing his father took a fatal dose of bar bitch who it's just before Joel's midterm I Didn't want to take something easy like writing or something because like I want to take something that actually has a challenge I want to take biology. I couldn't do chemistry because that's too difficult But I do biology and he wouldn't do it. It was days before the midterms And it's a cool get he's gonna see I'm gonna get I'm gonna feel his forearm this weekend and then all of a sudden

They just fucking commit suicide or try to commit suicide. No, he wouldn't he committed suicide Yeah, I guess he went into a coma after that Because I when he got a 90 the nurse was like, you know, they say some people in comas can hear Go tell your father I got it 90 day You know just picked up the arms try to Like a cape. Oh, well, that was very good very impressive though Well, Rifkin claimed that the suicide

Ruined any chance he had at redemption. He said quote and this is a direct quote if I succeeded with this I would have got a hug it would have been a A meaningful hug So you killed 17 women because you Get you a hug I'll get you a dog that'll hug you It's about his father not giving him a hug after he got a B on a biology While his father is dying of prostate cancer and committing suicide probably not even thinking about his son probably just so Riddled with cancer and pain. He just wanted it all in. Yeah. Yeah, he just wanted it over

But I don't know doing it like a couple of days before the midterm That's the sound like I don't think he committed suicide specifically out of spite But I think the spite played a part in the time. I mean It's just again not killing 17 women sad when he died apparently he did wink And so using a lost hug as a rationalization Joel began an even deeper slide into the world of street sex work for the next two years He spent almost every cent he made doing odd landscaping jobs on front seat blowies and backseat around the world Scissors hand. Yeah, and I go all the way from car cuts to Greenland. Oh, wow you go all the way there

Additionally Joel was also getting scammed and conned by sex workers with fair regularity because Joel was an easy mark In one example Joel picked up a girl on Atlantic Avenue here in Brooklyn And she directed him to a grocery store parking lot where they could do the deed I like it where you can see with the dumpster with the bananas in it That is nice and we're free guns as well so you can eat some tomatoes from there and salads Now this wasn't out of the ordinary because a lot of the women on the street had places where they felt safe doing business You know a place that's somewhat a mixture of public and private But as soon as Joel pulled up to a wall in the parking lot a car pulled up behind him and two guys barreled out claiming to be cops

In a classic New York style scam the guys came at Joel fucking Hard saying that the woman currently in his car had reported that someone had stolen 50 bucks from her and Joel was the most likely Suspect. No, my name isn't someone. My name is Joel Rifkin But of course they said they could take care of it all right now without involving anyone else if Joel just gave them the money So I got 30 bucks. Yep. Joel gave him 30 bucks. Do you mind if I give you $30, but then can I come in 90 seconds still? What if I already came? Okay, well Joel came 30 bucks. He claimed that was all that he had so they said good enough and they left but after they left Joel pulled another 30 from under the seat of his car and just went and picked up another woman because he knew I mean

He had mugger money like he knew that he could get conned or scammed at any Scammers, you never did that. I used to put money in my sock. Yeah mugger money Although that money that we had but no when I was good But as a young man in New York, I used to put money in my sock because of how many times I was mug I then you learn that you hide some money and then you put that's what he would do Ed Larsen all your socks. Yeah, I always put it in my ass Different I didn't use it again. Yeah. Oh, that's weird Yeah, Ed used to do this back in the day when he used to sell a little bit of weed

He used to hide money from himself and then he used to put money in books and stuff around up scamming a scammer He's scamming himself. Yes But that's what Joel used to do too in order to make his money last longer He used to hide money from himself and he put it all over his car. He put all of his apartment So wouldn't all go in one go Hey, what's up everyone, how you doing Ben kissle here with Henry Zabrowski Yeah, bro, Henry Zabrowski is smoking some of that sweet last podcast Go out there and purchase yourself some I hope you enjoy it

We have sativa we have indica and we have a hybrid and I have to tell you for my personal experience They are wonderful super tasty live resin. You really get the delicious weedy taste, which is what I like and three different experiences You go to your local vape store and get it. Absolutely. Thank y'all so much for supporting the show We absolutely love you can't wait to see on the road and get that vape Put it in your brain and have a good time And if you want to set your favorite weed store give them a call and ask for them by name last podcast on the left It's weed hail yourselves everyone hail Satan And

Another scam Joel said the same girl ripped him off twice using the exact same con She told him after he picked her up that she lived with her grandmother And if it was all right with him they could go back to her place to conduct their business So once they arrived the girl said she had to go inside to make sure her grandmother was asleep Which meant Joel had to wait outside in the car Yeah, so use weight out here. I'll go inside and I'll come back and get you if she's if she's asleep But wouldn't it be louder that way? It's double entrance. It's a scam and it's an obvious scam Yeah, instead of coming back the girl just walked through the house to the backyard and hop the fence leaving Joel out front with his

Dick in his hand. I'm Chris Hansen with MSNBC. I don't think she's coming back Yeah, and then he said I don't know if that was even her house Can I ask this though Like he is a quote-unquote mark But I also think again this is about liking the attention and that he likes the he likes being in this cyclical world with all of these people I think he probably would have liked it better if she didn't just walk away with this money I don't think I think that he just didn't give a single fuck. I think that he had no no was probably pretty bummed He I don't know very angry. I think part of it

I think part of it was also he had these violent fantasies and you know We talk about this again and again where these guys put themselves in a situation where it can be justified So I think yeah, I think part of it aiming it Yeah, I think part of it was that he just you know, there was truly times when he's like I would have much rather have had a blow job then getting scammed right now, but I think he also Allowed these things to happen in order to just one day justify Well, one of these days these violent fantasies are gonna come out and they're gonna fucking deserve it because of what they

He liked being mad. That's what it is. Yeah liked being mad Like there was something about it because he says there's a there is a clue because he said it was the only time He felt any sort of solace was the one time he stood up for himself in high school where he yelled at all those dudes It was the one time he ever felt that where he was just like he allowed himself to experience the emotion there and there was power in his anger Mm-hmm. Hmm. From what it seems Joel didn't necessarily have a specific stress trigger point that led to his first murder like other serial killers We've covered in the past like dentistry. They're getting fired or like Bundy like discovering that his sister is his mom Yeah, instead it seems like Joel Rifkin after ten years of picking up sex workers from the street without incident 300 by his count. He decided to finally give in to the violent fantasies that had only gotten stronger since junior high

Okay, now taking the stand mr. Rifkin. Okay, hear me out 300 sex workers 17 that think about the ratio ratio if you're on Twitter and I got 300 likes and 17 dislikes I'm right. Hey, technically you're not too far off Well, see Joel Rifkin not surprisingly still lived with his mother out on Long Island and in March of 1989 when Joel was 30 Jean Rifkin went out of town on a whitewater rafting trip to Colorado Her husband's her husband's he died not too long before and so she's trying to get out there. She's trying to get active Have a new life railed by a guy on a raft. Yeah, maybe Well, this gave Joel what was pretty much his first opportunity ever to bring a sex worker back home

Which was the location where most of his violent fantasies played out And this is a fairly common occurrence with serial killers as most commit murders in locations or areas in which they feel comfortable and safe Eventually though in bolden because he rarely came close to getting caught Joel Rifkin came to feel comfortable and safe Almost anywhere in New York City Ben Kissel the Buffalo Wild Wings killer Help me play seafields at home The Buffalo, yeah, the Buffalo Wild Wings at JFK. That's the only oh, that's a good one And the Barney's scenery over here in LAX. We take a look at the evidence and seems that Ben Kissel in his rage He massacred over 400 wings

But he left those other thousand alone That was because they were unpaid for isn't that nice so around 10 p.m. One night after Joel watched an episode of Kojak He decided to drive his Ford F 350 into Manhattan and before long go to bad buddy Yeah, and before but hey, that's night time. He's a man I forgot you're addicted to the night. Yeah, 10 p.m. After Kojak, that's when the night begins Nicotine patch. I'm sorry. I forgot and before long Joel found a woman named Heidi Balch on East 12th and 1st Avenue in the East Village

So where the AMC is oh, yeah, of course, we all know exactly what that is Yeah, now go. Yeah across the street from the L train vintage place. You know that block. Oh, yeah Now according to Joel's description, which is all we have Heidi was not doing well Just like a lot of the women Joel murdered See this was also a time when AIDS was a particularly bad problem in New York City and Heidi from Joel's description Sounds like a heroin addict deep into a deadly infection But on the other hand Joel's description. Oh men the descriptions of The women that Joel Rifkin killed are devastating. It's really sad

Very sad because he again, that's why I felt like that's what he was choosing was those So, I mean was there a what is it called angel of death type thing? Did you have a mercy killing? No, he just literally just trying to get the weakest people. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And but you know on the other hand Joel's descriptions of the women He murdered it seems it's a further attempt to dehumanization I mean he implies again and again that their deaths that were no big loss and ironically this is often the same justification cops give for Not investigating sex worker murders. They use the exact same fucking thing. It's weird. Yeah, it's the same thing It's just like they were literally they were gonna die anyway Yeah, but regardless of Joel's read on the situation he brought Heidi back to his house in the middle of the night

Not worrying what the neighbors might think because Joel was known in the neighborhood as a quote eccentric nocturnal creature Hey, I'm a werewolf That's pretty cool And so within minutes of walking in the door Joel and Heidi had sex and being in a place in which he felt safe that gave rise to even Stronger violent fantasies. He's setting himself up to do it. Yeah, but nothing happened during the act and afterward Heidi took a nap while Joel watched 1989 MTV perhaps catching fine young cannibals or already am or even Millie Vanilly during their short-lived time near the top

They're back when the music television actually showed music videos Real music videos. Yeah But once Heidi woke up and wanted to head out to score more heroin Joel got angry at what he called her single mindedness But he did agree to take her or at least he agreed at first in a split second though Joel claimed that something happened something happened She said something something popped in his mind and instead of grabbing his keys He picked up an 18 inch long 10 pound howitzer tank shell He'd just bought at a flea market and crushed Heidi skull with it raining it down over and over and over again

Yeah, he said he started hit nerdy hitter so many times. It was when his arms started hurting. Yeah, so we're blaming MTV for this I didn't I didn't I don't think it's that actually would more blame ridiculousness Oh my so just all of a sudden he fucking snapped just fucking snapped and decided this is what I'm gonna do it and It straight weirdly his first instinct after he did it He turned up the television as loud as the television turned up the television and he's panicked He thought the cops are gonna be here any second But as he was closing all the blinds in his house Heidi got back up She attacked him the best she could and bit his finger almost to the bone damn

But eventually he pinned her against the wall and held her there by her neck until she finally expired Then he took a nap. Yeah, he's a I mean he's empty He's not nothing person like Joel Rifkin experience is nothing He wants to be as far away from himself as humanly possible. I can actually it actually kind of makes sense that he took a nap Yeah, I mean I guess he's exhausting Well, truly emotionally exhausted in his own way when he woke up a few hours later though He's stuffed the body into a plastic bag and dragged it down to the basement where he got to work on a methodical disposal

Reducing the act to nothing more than a dissection in a biology class Joel dismembered Heidi's corpse without compunction Using an exacto knife as a kind of scaffold he made small controlled cuts over joints and Pop the bones out of their sockets later comparing it to carving up a turkey. Is that why he took biology? No, I know he just took biology because he thought he could get a bee Yeah, he just thought he could get a bee and then the dog the police will be like you can actually Decapitate somebody using an exacto knife and essentially he just said you just have to do it real carefully Just like that episode of Seinfeld where they wanted to name a mojo

I was a crate. I would I'm glad they kept that seat Then Joel began pulling the teeth out of the decapitated head Although for some reason he didn't finish the job. He left four teeth still in there I don't know why he just went with you. How many we got 24 22 It sounds like the kind of guy whose father wanted him to get a bee. Yeah, it sounded like he couldn't figure After that he stuffed the head into an empty paint can which went in the back of Joel's truck along with the body parts Which are stuffed in 33 gallon trash bags First Joel drove to New Jersey where the head was discarded still in the paint can and what Joel thought was a remote wooded area

About 70 miles north Joel tossed the bag containing the legs into a creek Finally Joel returned to New York City in the same neighborhood where he picked up Heidi and heaved the bags Containing her arms and torso into the East River off lower Manhattan back when such things were easily done without much fear of discovery He had been thinking about this for a very long time I think that did that's the reason why he jumped right into action is that he that's because it does seem like a more Experienced serial killer. Yeah doing this crime, but I think he's cuz he had he'd already had this plan He knew he was going to do this the second he started hitting her Now it seemed like no one was the wiser when it came to the missing sex worker and in that Joel was correct

But a severed head found in the woods catches everyone's attention Because what Joel thought was a remote wooded area was actually the border of a golf course Yeah, this fucking fucking moron, but straight up. It was a guy who hit a ball into the rough He went over there and he found the head in a paint can no Steve. It's play it where it lies And that's how I knew if I could just get my wedge in there I know that if it was laying right on the edge of her teeth Yeah, if I could just chip it if I could just chip it I can maybe make the green. Oh my god But no one even came close to Joel Rifkin for the head

And in fact Heidi wasn't even identified until 2013 and until then she was known as Susie I mean they did try To identify or they even did you know, they did some reconstruction, you know, they put a lot into it There was one cop who like actually took it upon himself. It's like I'm gonna fucking figure this out I'm gonna do it and it took him until 2013. He fucking did it. So I went down I went down and I asked every single person. Do you know a woman with four teeth? You know and no one they all know people with whole mouth of teeth Well as far as Joel's mother went she returned from Colorado after the murder to find the same

Disappointing oddball son. She'd left having no idea that a murder had occurred in her absence So what'd you do? What'd you do when I was gone Joel? Just nothing Okay Music is up really loud on the TV You didn't have a party or anything Okay Now after the murder of Heidi Balch Rifkin swore off murdering. I'm done Wow

Wow But he continued to pick up sex workers from the street Although he tried stopping that as well for a time in an attempt to will himself out of both He began writing daily reminders that said No more P. No more P. No more K. That meant no more prostitutes. No more killing. No more stop And then I put a rubber band on my wrist. Uh-huh. What I do is every single time I think about killing a sex worker I just go snap my snap it and I'm like Well, thank you. Thank you so much for coming to our Senate hearing justice Rifkin

Really appreciate you. So you just keep a calendar of everything. I like Oh, yeah, but it's time passed and he returned to his old ways Rifkin found that the memory of the murder replayed in his head almost constantly but where most people would find this loop to be horrific and maddening Joel described it as Annoying he had no emotional content She's mostly he was angry that killing now excited him more than sex and because he found himself Fantasizing about killing every woman he was with he had to fight the urge and because he had to fight the urge He couldn't maintain his pitiful little erection

Meanwhile Joel almost started relationships with certain sex workers He picked up or at least he seemed to try to get like a sort of girlfriend experience from time to time Which of course never fucking worked out. I remember that movie. Yeah In another incident in which his mother was out of town Joel brought a woman back to Long Island and hung out all day Without having sex Instead the woman stole most of his mother's jewelry when Joel wasn't looking well I and when Jean returned Joel had to admit that he'd brought a sex worker back to their home and She'd stolen everything but I kind of feel almost in a way

Jean was like at least you did one normal thing and Mad she was real Jewelery and stuff you know Long Island ladies. They love the jeweler. Oh, believe me. I know my no, I Remembered my father buying the five-carat like tennis bracelet for my mom in the back of a truck somewhere We had to go and this is like when they go up above a Chinese food restaurant. Honestly, it was great. Great jewelry Fantastic and so using this experience as a justification Joel bided his time until his mother went out of town again. His chance came in late 1990

18 months after his first murder when Joel picked up a woman named Julie Blackbird Wow, sounds like the name of a vengeful spirit who murders serial killers You just go that is our fucking next comic book Yeah fucking Julie Blackbird at his mother's house Joel and Julie watched a little MTV Perhaps catching the videos for Love Shack Or funky cold Medina or even forgotten power ballad when children cry by one hit Wonders white lion I haven't even thought of when children crying a while. Can we play a section of that? I don't know Yeah, there were a lot of hits Madonna had a big year Paula Abdul 1989 year was that was that cold-hearted snake cold-hearted snake?

I don't think I don't think it was cold-hearted snake. It was more the Paula Abdul. It's not like opposites attract It's not the ones that you really love. It's kind of the lesser Paula Abdul was Amy Grant popular Amy Grant I think had a hit that year as well I think she was near the bottom of the top 100 list of videos and MTV in 1989 1988 was cold-hearted snake. Yeah, and that was when I went out because I was what all of my Cousins they they all all the girl cousins they got together and they dressed me up as a little girl We all danced together to cold-hearted snake for our family. We did a big choreographed and you're not a serial killer at all I never killed anybody. I'm the only thing I've killed is a Jersey Mike's up. Absolutely. There you go

You really got that yeah 1988 that was also the year of a yeah Pretty cool, it's pretty believable, but I but after having sex and watching a few more of these wonderful hits of yesteryear I remember I remember I'm forced to now. Oh, well Joel felt the urge to kill rising He and Julie Blackbird drove to an ATM so he could pay her what he owed and that was when Joel got a notice for insufficient funds So get him and what he didn't know is that back in the day you could still take money out Could you put yourself into rears? Yeah? Yeah, you could Eddie taught me that trip But that was another trick that Eddie taught me if you run out of money

You could take the money out of your bank account and then just goes in negative. Oh, yeah, no, it's a get overdraft fees Yeah Having to pay a lot more Keeps a lot of people in poverty The nice thing is it's rent to own Everything is on lay away You're only about 500 years away Well the rage within Joel hit highest level it could so he drove back to his mother's house with Julie

Claiming that he needed to wait for the bank to open so he could get her the money that she was owed and they love that Oh, yeah, but once they walked back into the house Joel picked up a table leg one of the many his mother had laying around His mother her hobby was restoring old furniture. So there were a bunch of table legs and shit I just let littering the house. It sounds like his mom was a very independent strong woman Yeah, he had incredibly capable and wonderful parents. Yeah. Yeah, there's no reason. Yeah And he used that table leg to beat Julie Blackbird to death Now this was like six months, right? Was it or the 18 months? Yeah 18 months after yeah Now Rifkin of course blames not himself for this murder, but the ATM

He said that oh, he would have gotten the cash. He would have paid Julie and just driven her home and therefore she would have still been alive today So it's not he got one of those American psycho ATMs Yeah, yeah, it was it should put the cat the machine Put the cat in the machine. You know what I don't remember that. Yeah Like once in college. It's great. What rewatch it. It holds up. It's like rewatch that tonight. Yeah, I'm actually voting for him And I'm vote for him in November. Yeah, I wrote Patrick Bateman in to everything Really great, but even though this murder supposedly disturbed Joel in the moment He's still as he did with the first one took a nap after the murder

This time though after taking the body down to the basement He decided he needed a full night's rest before taking care of the disposal because this one was gonna be far more labor-intensive I gotta do some I gotta take care of me. Yeah, you really this is just like you see him with this mask He's got his like a little facial like the flappy thing on he's just watching friends and I Feel like there's something I have to do later This is my time Remembering how easily part of the last corpse have been found Joel woke up the next morning and drove to home depot Where he bought a few bags of quick cement

After dismembering the body limb by limb again with the help of an exacto knife noting that he was surprised There wasn't a lot of blood to mop up this time because most of it had coagulated already Rifkin brought out the cement the parts were entombed in three separate blocks But Joel neglected to take into account that even though it was quick cement. It still had to dry So the slab sat in his basement for days while he waited for them to solidify Jesus and once they were ready for transport all three were driven and sunk to the bottom of the East River and Even though it took Joel 18 months to take his second victim The next four would come in rapid succession and that's where we'll pick back up

Conclusion to our series. Yes, because then he'll do his first of what Joel will go on to call his clusters And he would do these in clusters and next week he gets a lot more bloody We're gonna talk a little bit more about the reasons why we don't know why he is this way And maybe next week we'll talk a little bit more about that And we're gonna hear probably a lot more things about my uncle's Uncle butch also work for the sanitation career, but he also got wiped out by scandal There's a lot of the guys made a lot of weird decisions in the early 90s. Don't mess with sanitation That's all I know also the only clusters anyone should have is a peanut cluster. We all agree with that

Thank you. What about about a go-goo cluster? It's a go-goo cluster. Yeah, not everything has to be about the fucking go-goo dolls It's a good wonderful candy. Is it yeah, it's a southern candy a go-goo cluster. Let's take a look at it here I'm guessing go-goo. Go-goo cluster. Go-goo cluster. Oh, it's just a whole bunch of rotten teeth Go-goo cluster is an ice cream It's a tasty combination of nuts caramel nougat and milk chocolate in a deliciously rounded cluster There's also a thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah Oh Fantastic, I guess we wouldn't understand. I guess we wouldn't know. Yeah, it's a go-goo cluster thing. Y'all wouldn't understand

Thank you all so much for listening. We're gonna see you a comic-con this weekend or next note two weekends from now Yeah, which we can't wait. We're gonna do a little bit of a panel and some signings and Diego We have not gotten any any information about our schedule But as soon as we have that that we will put that up you can come and see us Us you must come to Europa. Do we want to like list off those dates? All right? Let's list them off. I'm gonna Google my schedule like I always do gonna be in Europe In Europe because you know when you're American going into the bathroom and American coming out of the bathroom What are you in the bathroom?

Those dates are starting in Amsterdam on October 6th. We're gonna be at demirvert Then on October 10th, and we're going to cover the entire show and go Also, I have got confirmation that the sex museum in Amsterdam the entire second floor is still just animal fucking people I'm just gonna avoid no one should go there. I'm gonna go. I have to go now. No, you're gonna be traumatized I got a DM that the guy was like I still don't understand why it's like that October 10th, Edinburgh, then we're gonna be going to Dublin, Manchester, London and Birmingham and that's all gonna be in October of this year So go to last podcast on the left comm to see if you can make it to one of those shows

We can't wait to see all out there. It's a good fucking time the last two times Yes, and we can't wait to go a third can't fucking wait That's right z2comics.com and check out pre-order a last comic book on the left volume, too This time we have a little bit even with even more of a quality In this I can't wait. Did you see any of the we actually got that big creative roundup yesterday? It's fucking hard for volume to Rick Feige did a Philip K. Dick story that's gonna blow your fucking mind It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, we got stuff from all kinds of artists and writers you guys gonna fucking love as soon as it comes in We'll let y'all know

Absolutely. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for supporting all the shows here on the last podcast network, and yeah I guess that's about it. That's it I'm happy. We finally got to Joel Rifkin the guy is more pathetic than I even thought Yes, yes indeed coming from a real Randy Kraft fan Guy who fucking loves it You all right everyone hell yourself. Hey, I'll say this again. My good relations everybody Oh, you've got a chance you got an extra minute And toss a hail my way toss a hammers way and hug your children apparently or they're gonna become serial killers as if being the

Pressure of being a parent wasn't enough sell your children. Okay? This show is made possible by listeners like you thanks to our ad sponsors You can support our shows by supporting them for more shows like the one you just listened to go to last podcast network.com