Morbid - Joel Rifkin

Episode Date: May 22, 2018

Failed landscaper and all around malfunctioning human Joel Rifkin is currently serving a 203 year prison sentence for the murder and dismemberment of 17 women in Long Island and New York State between 1989 and 1993. Unfortunately, he is one of those, "Must be a monster living inside of me" type of turds. Joel, you're a real bummer. Sources: https://brockportbeat.com/2017/05/02/brockport-serial-killer/ https://youtu.be/SVUeaQ0Oyg4 Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey weirdos. I'm Ash. I'm Elena. And this is morbid. Woo. After talking about dead Russians last week. Hope you had fun. I bet you did. And today, coincidentally, as we record, the royal wedding happened.

We're just like taking you down a happy trail today. Yeah, let's just, we start on a light note. Yeah, we could end on this light note, but why don't we just begin on it? Yeah. And then we'll slowly plumb it down. We're going to bring you up just to crush you back down. That's what we're good at. So the royal wedding was delightful.

It was so nice. It was so pretty. I woke up at like six and I was like, oh my God, the royal wedding's on. And they like love each other. Oh my God. They really do because I watch their vows and I'm not going to lie to you. I cried a little bit. That's not surprising.

No, that's not surprising. But I did cry a little bit and then I was like, don't be a little bitch. Like Harry kept saying I love you to her and you look amazing and I'm so lucky. I was like, Girl. Her veil was all the different, I think you say like provinces. Is that what it is? Sounds good. Yeah. There was all the little places in England. I don't know. It was a bunch of places on her veil. It's like the Soviet Union of Russia. Yeah, exactly like that. Actually, that was outlined on her bail.

I'm sure it was. I gotta represent Russia, isn't it? I don't think there was really any other true crimes. things that happened this week. Not that I know of. Golden State Killer is still shutting his damn trap. Yeah, fuck that guy. So, we haven't heard anything

about the Zodiac yet. We still don't know about that lady in the woods. Oh, that lady with the lifeless child. Seriously, when we have an update on that. I still got goosebumps. I just got them right now. I want to go with, it's the Bermuda Triangle, and that was a ghost. You mean the Bridgewater

triangle because we're not in Bermuda. It's the Bermuda. It's the Bermuda. Guys, It's been a really long week. This has been the longest fucking week of my life, I swear to you. I cut my hand open at work. Oh, God. With a tool.

You use tools at work and I do too. I do use tools at work. It was a knife. It was a razor, but. Hey. It's my finger right open. That's almost worse than a knife. Yeah, it actually was.

Razors? Yeah. Those are sharper. It's a jagged little bitch. Jagged little bitch. It's like jagged little pill, but the really grunge version of it. Yeah. Jagged little.

Cool. I like it. That's another good band name. Band name. Jagged little bitch. Nailed it. Jacked little bitch. The band name. Call it. I love it. Well, I guess now that we've enthralled you. Yeah, let's not be assholes. So much, we should probably get right into it. Here we go. One, two, three, go. So June 28th, 1993, set the scene. Look at that. And your mother's birthday. That's my mother's birthday. The date of my mother's birth, 1993.

Long Island State Troopers, Deborah Spargaran. Sorry if I said that wrong, Deborah. Sorry, chica. Use a boss. And Sean Ruin? Sorry if I said that wrong, Sean. I think it's Rewain. I watched a documentary.

Sounds better. So, Deborah Spargaran and Sean Ruein. Spotted a 1984 Mazda pickup truck driving around with no license plates. at about 3.15 in the morning when nothing good happens. I'm just going to tell you, I'm just going to give you a quick tip. If you're doing spooky, sketchy, weird shit, make sure you have two license plates. Yeah.

Or at least one even. You don't want to be like Ed Kemper. Get pulled over for a busted taillight. Have two dead bodies in your car. Nothing happened. I mean, also don't have two dead bodies in your car. Just don't do that. Number one.

So not having license plates. is a big vehicular no-no, as we all know. So these state troopers attempted to pull him over. The driver didn't exactly accelerate, so he wasn't speeding at all, but he also refused to pull over. He was not compliant. But it wasn't a high-speed chase. It was like a low-speed chase.

Like he just wouldn't pull over. This lasted for like 20 minutes. He never went over 50 miles an hour. They threw on the sirens. They used the loudspeaker. to demand that he pulled the truck over, and he still just puttered along like he didn't even notice that they were there.

They called for backup, but as soon as they were calling for backup, the truck missed a turn and slammed into a utility pole. They drew their guns, and the driver literally got out of the car with his hands up and handed over his license with no issues at all. So as they looked over his credentials and got him out of the truck,

they started to smell something foul. Following their noses, they were drawn to something quite large and human-shaped that was wrapped in a tarp and wrapped in rope in the bed of the truck. What do you think it was? Quick little sneak peek in the tarp revealed a badly decomposing body of a woman. Shit. No good. No good. So they went over to the police car and like tap, tap, tap.

Hey. What's the dead lady in your talk about? So what's up with that dead lady in the tarp back there? And 34-year-old unemployed landscaper, Joel Rifkin, revealed that it was a sex worker named Tiffany Brasciani. And in his words, he said, I killed her. She was a prostitute. Wow. I mean, thanks.

All right. All right. He really was. I did find a fun little. quote from investigator Dwayne Russell, that when he, basically when he talked to her, Joel Rifkin about this situation, he said, well, I picked up this hooker near Allen's street in Manhattan. We had an arrangement for sex, but things got out of hand.

I strangled her. He seemed kind of upset, but he wasn't really upset about killing this woman. He was more upset about getting caught because of the missing license plate. So he said, I know I had a plate on when I left home. it's always a 25 cent part. What a bummer, Joel. Those darn 25 cent parts. Get you caught from murder every time.

Yeah. So this is the story of Joel Rifkin, who confessed to killing 17 women. Over about a three-year period, I want to say. So he was a busy dude. He was real busy. So he was born, this is kind of funny, January 20th, 1959 in New York. That's my brother's birthday. This is weird

A little too many There's a lot of thing here Yeah He was actually born to two unwed college kids And they gave him up for adoption Like immediately To a super nice family Yeah

He was adopted at three weeks old To Ben and Gian Rifkin Is that Gian or Gene? Oh Gene We're going to go with Gene Sorry Gene If your name is GM

So he was adopted at three weeks old to Ben and Gene or Gianne Riffkins. On February 14th, Valentine's Day, 1959. Ben was a structural engineer, and Jean was a homemaker. She liked gardening. This family also adopted a daughter named Jan a couple of years later.

So apparently things were going pretty well with Joel at the time. Right. Joel, Jan, Jean. Yeah. They moved to East Meadow Long Island in 1965, and when I looked that place up, it seems like it's kind of like middle upper class, like nice place to raise a family, all that good stuff. He seemingly had a loving and normal home life where he was taking care of properly and

not abused in any way. Like whatsoever. He even attests to that that his home life growing up was really good. Yeah. He's not like these other ones that will like try to create a bad home life to make it like validate themselves for being a shitbag. I think he's literally like, yeah, I don't know why I did this. Like I have no reason. He's like confused about it. Yeah. So he was very different from like say Edmund Kemper, who had, you know... Nightmare, nightmare. He just started out real bad. So, the only real bummer with Joel,

well, not the only real bummer, the first real bummer with Joel, is that he was bullied pretty badly in school. You know what? Who wasn't? Yeah. I mean, there were plenty of people who weren't. Yeah, but... Not everybody, but...

A lot of people get bullied and don't turn to serial murders. Yeah. Like, I... You were bullied a bit. I was sent to an abandoned house when they said it was a cool party. Let's just say, fuck those girls real quick. Yeah. You know who you are, girl.

I think you're listening. She's totally not. She doesn't have the device. She's still way too cool for podcasts. Yeah, fuck her. Yeah, fuck her. So, but what, I didn't grow up and become a serial killer. I grew up and started talking about it.

It's very different. Or I grew up to become an autopsy technician. So that could explain some. So I just went the more professional route. But either way, being bullied is not an excuse. You know what, being bullied is an excuse to show everybody that they were wrong. Precisely. Hell yeah.

This is a PSA. A morbid PSA. If you're being bullied right now, just stick it to the man. Yeah. In the right way. And you know what? When you get older. It's cool to be weird.

I was going to say, everybody's trying to be weird. Everybody's trying to fit in when they're in school. And the weird ones are always the ones that are picked on. but then later everyone wants to be weird and they're all trying to be like you when you're just innately weird. I literally bought aviator glasses which are not even cool but they're cool as hell now. Here I am. So see, everyone wants to be nerdy and weird now. We win in the end guys.

Weirdos win in the end. I'm taking my fashion tips from y'all. That's right. So mainly what they targeted Joel about was his posture, which it's like, come on guys. I guess he was very slumped over all the time because I'm. I think he was kind of like, he was tired. He's just kind of a bummer. He walked really slowly at a very slow gait.

So they gave him nicknames like the turtle. Which is like, super clever guys. You're doing really good. Also, that's not even super offensive. Turtles are pretty cute. No, I mean, as a kid, that sucks. You don't want to be called the turtle.

But now it's like, come on. So he also was dyslexic, but he had an IQ of 128, which is pretty high. It's actually in, it's exactly. It's really high. Compared to 12. That's huge. It's real high. Ackolades, buddy.

It's actually in the 96th percentile, and he actually only misses the MENSA qualification by two points. What's MENSA? MENSA is literally a society of people with high IQs. No wonder. I don't know about it. I was just going to say the fact that you had to say, what's MENSA? She likes to shit on me.

I'm being bullied. You're shoveling the material. I'm digging myself a hole. No, don't. I live a simple life. I live a simple life. I enjoy the simple things. It doesn't take much.

So unfortunately, Joel tried really hard to fit in. He actually joined the track and field team when he entered his teen years, but he was still bullied, even on the track and field team. Just trying to do something. They really are. Kids suck. Once they decide that you're out, you're just, don't even bother. Yeah, just wait until you get out of school and you'll be fine.

Read some books. Just don't become Joel Rifkin. He actually, actually, he actually. actually ended up joining the yearbook staff. And he joined because he got a camera given to him by his parents, a brand new camera, because he was kind of into photography, apparently. And immediately the camera was stolen. Which is shitty.

That's shitty. I've got to go and murder people over it. He's still, like, attempted to, you know, do all the yearbook stuff. He met deadlines. He did what he needed to do. And at the end of the year, there was a rap party, and they didn't invite him. And I guess he was, like, devastated by it. Which that sucks.

say is maybe they knew what was coming. I know, but I don't think they did. I think kids just suck and I think, but again, this doesn't give him any right to do what he did or to just, you know, get out of there, throw him the middle finger and never look back. That's all you got to do. Yeah. Come on, Joel.

So classmates later said that he was routinely pushed into showers, fully dressed, tripped in the halls and regularly called nerd, dooms and oddball. Dooms? Yeah, I guess because he was super depressed. and like a bummer. So they were like, called him dooms. It's like, you're kind of, you're the reason he's a bummer. Like, you're the reason he's doomed.

You guys are doomed. Yeah, they're dooms. So, of course, this made him completely isolated. Like, mistreatment like this is going to start wearing on you. No matter who you are, it's going to start wearing on you. Some people just take it in a different direction. Yeah. He isolated himself completely.

And he started living in his own kind of fantasy world. He kind of retreated into it. And he started kind of living off of violent fantasies about raping and stabbing women. He said he got a lot of his fantasies from the movie Frenzy. Exactly. I was just going to say because he was obsessed with that movie. It was from 1972. Basically, the movie is about a serial killer in London who rapes and murders women.

And in the movie, he also strangles women. So, and you'll find out that's kind of something. Spoiler alert. Joel strangles women. During this time, he started to become obsessed with sex workers and fantasizing. And I think sex workers can kind of, since he wasn't really socially apt, sex workers gave him a way to get that part of what he needed and he could kind of fantasize at the same time. And he was more in control.

Exactly. He felt like he was the big guy on campus here. He said it became his drug of choice. It did. He was addicted. For sure. He was addicted. And his parents actually gave him a car.

He used this gift to troll for sex workers in Hempstead in Manhattan. His fantasies still had this recurrent theme of rape, strangling, and sadism. So that's not good. Especially when you starts fantasizing about that stuff, eventually fantasizing isn't going to be enough, as we've seen so many of these people. You're going to say, I mean, the more we do these different guys who do this, we're going to see this as a theme that it just doesn't satisfy them enough. It's like a drug. Eventually, you need more and more to satiate. In 1977, he enrolled in Nassau Community College.

He was, again, he was super, super smart, but he did shitty. And he did shitty in high school, too, academically. Because he just wasn't doing it. And in college, he wasn't going to his classes. He barely showed up at all. He was having so many interactions with sex workers that he was actually missing work and missing classes because of it. And this, he was going broke because if you're not working

and you're spending all this money on sex workers, then you're, you know, you're not making enough money to survive. So he had ended up moving back in with his parents. He was also transferring schools quite a bit. He went to a few different colleges, getting shitty grades, and eventually in 1984 he just dropped out altogether. He did, apparently, what I did see was that he had a brief relationship with a woman, like super brief. I don't know her name, but she described him as sweet but always depressed. In February 1987, his father completed suicide.

Assumably, it was to end a long-suffering battle with prostate cancer. Joel even delivered the eulogy at the funeral. Oh, wow. So obviously this family was a close family. Too much said, though. I was watching this documentary today. And he, him and his dad argued a lot because his dad was a, I think his dad was like an engineer. Yeah, he was.

He was a structural engineer. Right. So obviously very smart. Mm-hmm. And he wanted to impress his dad. So he took a biology class, just a random biology class. And he was telling his dad, like, I'm going to do well, but, like, based on past, like, occurrences. Performances. Yeah. His dad was like, yeah, right. And he, Joel thinks, so the dad

like committed suicide basically to end his thing with cancer, his battle. And Joel thought that he did it on purpose to correlate with like when Joel was supposed to get his midterm grade. Oh, that's really sad. He got a good grade in the class. Oh, that's really sad. And he said that he just thinks that his dad is going to always think of him as a disappointment, which is so doomsy. Yeah. And you know what, as sad as we feel about him right now, just wait, because this guy's a real fucking asshole. Yeah, I just wanted to share that quick sad story.

That's really sad. But, I mean, his mother also became super withdrawn and depressed after the father's death, so that's tough. That same year, Joel was arrested in Hempstead, Long Island, for the first time for solicitation. He kept it from his mother, because it seems like

he kind of cared about what his mother thought. Again, they got along, everything was normal. It was around this time that he became obsessed with like serial killers who killed sex workers, including Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, and Arthur Shawcross, who's a real piece of work. We'll get to him later. He was also super into Ted Bundy who didn't kill sex workers, but I don't know. I guess he's probably on everybody's list if you're into serial killers. And the son of Sam.

Yeah, yeah. They found newspaper clippings. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It was in March of 1989 that he finally followed through on these fantasies and killed his first victim. Unfortunately, his first victim went unidentified for a long time. And there is a good reason for that. The first victim, when he confessed, because you'll find out later, he confessed to all of these. His first victim, he could only identify as Susie.

She was a sex worker who had a really bad drug problem. according to Joel when he picked her up she had asked him to stop several times to get drugs between the time she picked him up and he picked her up and the time they got to his house or his mother's house creepy

yeah his mom was on vacation with a sister at this time so they stopped a bunch of times for her to shoot up heroin they ended up getting back to the house they had sex and then she asked him to bring her to get more drugs and he was getting really annoyed because whatever else he did he wasn't into drugs

that's one thing he says he was just not into it. So it was really annoying him. Out of nowhere, he picked up a howitzer artillery shell. Is that a gun? It's basically a cannon. So the shell is what comes out of it. And it's like

two feet. It's a big thing. It's a big thing. He just has that lying around. He just barely had one lying around. Awful. So that's pretty intense. He picked up this howitzer artillery shell and he severely beat her with it.

And she lived, like, through that part of it. She lived through that, fought super hard. Even ended up biting his hand in the process. And he still has the scar, he said. Yeah, so good. Go, girl. Yeah. Unfortunately, he ended up getting the upper hand, and he strangled her to death.

Once he was done with that, he stuffed her body in a trash bag and took a nap. For four to six hours, he says. Yeah. So basically not even a nap. He went to sleep. He literally went to bed. He went through a REM cycle. Once he woke up from his nap, he dismayed.

He dismembered her with an exacto knife. A teeny tiny little craft knife. Like, I do autopsies for a living. I have no idea how he did that, and it would take so long. In fact, here's him talking about it right now. I just got fed up and I started hitting her. Basically, beat her until my arms got tired. And then we wrestled on the floor and ended up strangling her.

Cut her up with a hobby knife. Basically, I cut everything to the joint and then would pop the joints out. Did the legs the same way and proceeded to take her head off. So now I had six pieces that I wrapped up and casually loaded into the trunk of the car throughout the day. Yeah, so he makes that sound pretty easy, which is even creepier. Please don't try this. He's kind of, you'll see in these little clips, he kind of reminds me of like an Ed Kemper or BTK when he talks. because he's very chill very matter-fact about it and he's very aware that it's messed up and it's

like these these are the people are kind of fascinating when they're a little self-aware later describes itself as a monster yeah and what she is yeah which could again could be just a very intelligent psychopath pandering and trying to make people feel like he really thinks he's a monster I don't really think he thinks he's a monster. I think he's like just saying what he needs to say. He's pandering. So after he dismembered her into six pieces with an exacto knife, he removed her teeth with pliers.

I did not know that. And cut off the tips of her fingers to avoid identification. This is pretty interesting because the way he kind of describes this and the way that it comes out is like, he just got angry and he just out of nowhere. her with this how it's their shell and all that but it's like that's really next level shit to like think to take her teeth out and to take her hands like because he's thinking dental records and fingerprints that's thinking really clearly first of all and it's also that seems like he's plotted this out in his head before like he knew what he would do if he did this so I don't want to hear

him say like no I think you were planning this you just didn't know when it would happen but you knew what you would do when you did do it He actually stuffed her head into a paint cam. And the rest of her went into different trash bags, which in the clip you hear him say he brought them out real casually one by one, like throughout the day to his car. He ended up dumping the pieces in various locations around the city. The head and the arms went in the woods near Hopewell, New Jersey,

and the torso and legs went off a bridge in Manhattan. Someone ended up finding her head, which... I hope to God that I never find anybody's anything. From what I've heard it was a gallows. who found her head. That would be the end of that. That's why I don't do activities. That's why I don't move. That's why I stay inside. That's why I'm sedentary. So she went unidentified until 2013. Her name is Heidi Bulk. So they finally identified her. They found DNA that they were able to use and identify her. What DNA could they find? Off of her head.

Oh. Heads have DNA. Even millennial heads have DNA. No, I know that. I'm just saying it was so many years ago. I didn't know that. Yeah, I mean, they probably... Yeah, and they probably took samples. Like, when they find a dead body, they take all the samples anyway.

Even though DNA wasn't a thing, they probably took hair samples, skin samples. And now they're able to get the things they need from it. He ended up waiting a whole year to kill again. It was late 1990 that he picked up sex worker Julie Blackbird. when his mother was out of town again. He had the house to himself, which seems to be when he does his most gruesome, like, stuff. He had sex with her,

and then out of nowhere, he took a table leg and slammed her in the head with it, in a table leg. You know what he also said? He said after the first one he bowed that he wasn't going to do it again. Yeah. And then do you know what he said? After he, in the interview, he was like, and then Julie happened.

And you know why? I had a bad day. Yeah, had a bad day. Valid reason, right? You know, I have... Beat someone with a table leg. I have that days every now and then to Joel, and I don't beat people with you tables.

He ends up after he beat her with a table legs. He ended up strangling her and killing her. This is an interesting one because when he looked at her after he had killed her, he considered necrophilia for a moment. And then you realized he was above it? Well, he said he was super into Ted Bundy, and Ted Bundy was all about necrophilia. All about it.

And so he thought about doing it because he wanted to copy him, which is like such a weird. He wanted to pay tribute to Ted Burley. Yeah, like why. But like Ash said, he was like, you know what? I had a line. And in fact, here's another clip of him just quickly telling you why he didn't do it. The thought occurred to me because I had heard of it and then I shook off the thought and said, no. No, I'm making this dividing line in my head.

All right, I just killed somebody. But no, I won't go any. I won't do this next thing. I won't, you know, which is, I don't know, it's odd. But the whole thing is odd. So, yeah, that's fun that he had, you know, everyone's got standards. That's a boundary. Everyone's got standards.

So he ended up dismembering her because, again, he had the time because his mother was not home. Whenever she's not there and he has the time to bring these people back to his home, it's when he takes his time and really make sure that he dismembers and places things in places that people shouldn't be able to. to find them. He actually put her parts into cement, which is like weird. This is very odd, because he doesn't do this again, so that's weird. He must have just had that. Yeah, he must say, well, he said he actually went to the store and got cement. So he just decided to try this, I think, which it actually worked. So he traveled, he dumped her head and torso in the East

River and the rest of her in Brooklyn. She was never found. And the only reason that we know about her at all is from his confession. He was the one who said that I did this, and this is how I did it. They did find her diary in his possession. In 1991, he started a landscaping business because he also went to horticulture school for a brief time, and he actually did well there. So apparently horticulture was his thing. And it's funny that he started a landscaping business because it kind of reminds me of

Bruce MacArthur in Toronto, who was recently captured, who was the kill. of the missing men of Toronto. Because Bruce McArthur was also a landscaper, and he used his landscaping business to hide these bodies. So it's funny that what an odd profession to be a similarity. Well, this did allow him to get a storage space

to hold his tools and equipment, and he started using it to hide bodies because he was living with his mama. The next victim was Barbara Jacobs, who was, shocker, a sex worker. she had been arrested for prostitution and auto theft before. He picked her up.

He took her back to his mother's house. He had sex with her. And he beat her with the same table leg that he beat Julie Blackbird with. In the end, he strangled her too. He did? Yeah, this is, it's, I feel like I should just say, for the, from now until the end, he strangles everybody. He doesn't dismember her, though.

He wraps her in plastic, puts her in a cardboard box, and then... I didn't even talk about. Ashley just almost knocked over the entire computer. I just flew into oblivion. Thank you for being worried about me. I don't even know how to happen. This recliner is haunted. Oh, that was a lot.

Wow. I experience that. So he wraps her in plastic and puts her in a cardboard box. He dumps that cardboard. board box in the Hudson River, which clearly that's going to float. He did nothing to hide that at all. So it was super easy to find, and she was fined really quickly. There was no connection to him at the time.

The only reason this was connected to him was through his confessions later. So again, he gave, he connected himself to these things. The next victim was September 1991 when her name was Mary Ellen DeLuca. She was 22 years old. she was a sex worker and she was a drug addict. At the time she had left a group of friends saying she was going to get drugs and she ended up meeting and being picked up by Rifkin. After picking up some drugs around town,

they got a hotel room together and they ended up sleeping together. But he said that she wasn't into it at all and she just wanted to get through it because I think she wanted drugs basically. I think the only reason it was kind of the promise of drugs that she was going along with this. he claims that he asked her do you want to die and she said yes but again this is him telling the story

conveniently she's not around to tell the other side of the story so I think he's trying to take away accountability here he seems like this is kind of his M.O. is to take all the responsibility off himself and just be like I don't know why it was a monster who did it's not me so I don't say that exactly so I don't think he asked her that and if he did like fuck him man so he ended up strangling her and he disposed of her at a rest stop which is weird because up to this point he's been using water so it's kind of weird that he just yeah apparently did this happened in september she wasn't found until october

so she was out there for a month uh it was really difficult to determine at that point anything substantial, like how she died, especially because she was strangled, which can be hard to see post-mortem anyways. This is another one that wouldn't be connected to him until he confessed to it. Kind of crazy. Within the same month, which points to escalation in my mind, he murdered another woman named Yun Li. Now, she was Korean, she was a sex worker, but she was also married. Oh. Yeah. He actually knew her. What? They had had interactions before. Like he had picked her up before. Oh, that's a sex worker. So she knew him

and he knew her. He picked her up. He strangled her to death and he said it actually kind of bothered him because of the familiarity. He said that one bothered him. Because he all of a sudden. Yeah. And he dumped her body in the East River and she wasn't found until September

23rd, 1991. So it's weird that he picked someone he knew. He just couldn't. You know, in a lot of these cases like the Green River Killer Arthur Shaw Cross, anybody who targets sex workers and people that are kind of a marginalized population of people. They're kind of seen as a lot of times they're referred to as less dead. Well, and it doesn't draw as much attention.

Well, and that's the thing. They're less dead because they don't have a lot of connections to the world, basically. Because a lot of these people are runaways or don't have good family ties. And you don't think of them. Well, I mean, we do, but the people that kill them don't think of them as high families. They're able to look at them, like, you know. Which is horrible. These women, though, had a lot of family.

Mother's, sisters, brothers, all these husbands, boyfriend. They all showed up and were all devastated. So he's a piece of shit. So yet another victim when unidentified and it's still unidentified. Rifkin can't remember her name, he said, which makes me really angry. This is the first time that he actually strangled a woman during the act of fallaccio, which is a very weird. Like, he's really taking a walk on the wild side doing that. Yeah.

Because you're in a very compromising position. Like, that's very odd. Wow. He wrapped her up in a tarp, and this time he put her in a 55-gallon oil drum that he dumped into the East River. While he was doing this, someone saw him. Mm-hmm. Whoa.

And he ended up convincing this person that he was just out there collecting junk. Like, he wasn't dumping anything. He was just collecting stuff. In the documentary, they said it was the cops. He said two of New York's finest. That would be even crazy. It was like an A&E documentary. I don't even know.

I believe in A&E. Me too. Yeah, they're reputable. Because he said two of New York's finest and I convinced them that I was looking for scavenging for car parts. Wow. And they let him go. Wow. That's crazy.

I didn't read that they were cops. Look at that. Crazy. So like we, you know, so going back to the idea of like, you know, targeting people that are quote unquote less dead. Robert Reisler, who is a former FBI criminologist who's kind of well moon. About this case, he's. said there's a blend of hatred and sexual desire in men who pray on he says prostitutes sex workers it's misdirected anger the killer doesn't appreciate the victim as a human being at all so like we're saying

they're seen as subhuman by these people like they don't look at them as humans they look at them as things that they can use and then discard of and no one's going to miss them so he went right back at it in december 1991 next victim was lorraine orvieto she was 28 years old. She actually came from a pretty, like, wealthy family and was, like, popular in high school. She was a cheerleader. Unfortunately, she developed a cocaine addiction and a mental illness. So she was working the streets as a sex worker to pay for her addiction, which tends to be a story that, you know, strings through a lot of these.

He picked her up, and again, he strangled her mid-filatio. So this is his new thing all of a sudden. I tried looking stuff up, but I got kind of creeped out looking at. out about why somebody would do this or other serial killers who have done this, because I feel like I might have read something about this before. So was he strangling her, like, to kill her at that point? Yes. I didn't know if he was just strangling her during that, and then that ended and started actually.

Oh, no, he, like, killed her midway through. That's bizarre. Yeah. Yeah. It's just weird that this is a sudden thing that he's doing. Again, he put her in a 55-gallon oil drum, which is apparently his new thing. Now, he's switching. He seems to be very all over the place. He's just trying out.

He has the same memo of strangling in sex workers as targets, but he's really like experimenting with things. He put her in the 55-gallon drum, and he dumped her into Coney Island Creek. She was found July 1992. Whole year latex. Whoa. So the water?

Yeah. So that was a rough one. So the next one was Mary Ann Holloman. He strangled her the same way that he did the last two, mid-filatio. What the fuck? She was again placed in an oil drum, and he placed her into Coney Island Creek as well, which is funny because for a little while, people were thinking, you know, there's another pretty famous case,

the Long Island serial killer, the Go Go Beach murders. That's an interesting one that I'm sure we'll get to at some point. There was some people who later when he was caught were like, oh, wait a second, maybe he's that guy. Right. It doesn't turn out that it makes any sense because some of the things even, happened after he was caught. And he was very, he said he wasn't, which at this point, he was very open about what he did. He probably would have said it.

And one of his things was he said, no, I'm not that guy. That guy's super sloppy because he's putting his bodies in too small of an area. But this guy just dumped two bodies in the same area. Like that you're sloppy as fuck too. Just interesting that he said that. So he actually went back to college in 1992 after. his business was failing. He was getting himself in debt.

He was kind of on the downward spiral in all aspects. He was hitting the dooms. He was hitting the dooms real hard. And again, he started skipping all his classes, not showing up. And around this time, probably because he was in so much debt

and he was trying to work out of it, he kind of stopped seeing sex workers for a little bit and instead got really into watching VHS porn. So... You should have just... started with that. Just go with that, man.

If that's what you want to do, be my guess. Watch it. Exactly. Unfortunately, that didn't last because his next victim was Iris Sanchez, who was 25 years old, she was a sex worker and a crack addict.

Rifkin picked her up, he strangled her, and ended up dumping her body next to JFK airport, where he stuffed her under an old mattress, right next to the airport. She wasn't found until he actually confessed later. He had to draw police a map to get to the spot.

But she was, for years, she was sitting under a mattress next to JFK airport. I think you never would have found her probably. But how? She was sitting next to a goddamn airport. She was sitting right in the, like, that wasn't hidden at all. That's insane. It's bananas to me that they didn't find her. How did nobody see that?

Exactly. Especially in the airport, there's people in and out of there at all time. Thousands of people every day. It's like insane. But everyone's so focused on getting on the plane. Yeah. He just put her under a mattress. That's crazy.

I mean, this guy got so, like, I don't want to say lucky, but he got lucky with what he got away with. Well, that was lazy. Yeah, that was lazy. The next victim was Anna Lopez, who was 33 years old, a sex worker. She had a cocaine addiction, and she was strangled as well, of course, and she was dumped along the highway. She ended up being found by a passing motorist, and it ended up that he had stolen one of her earrings. Like she was found missing

an earring. He stole some jewelry from a few people. Yeah. And again, we'll get into he stole a lot of stuff for people. But this was a noticeable thing, I guess, because she had specific earrings. The next victim was Violet O'Neill. He

ended up bringing her back to his house. Now these other ones, I think were a little different because he wasn't bringing them back to the house. That's been murdered in the car. Exactly. So he brought Violet O'Neill kneel back to his house. He strangled her after having sex with her, and he dismembered her body. Because again, he's got time. He's got a place to do it now. So he's going right back to his roots.

He threw her pieces of her body into a river in Manhattan, and parts of her were found in the Hudson River. The next victim was another victim that he knew. He had been with this victim before, too. Her name was Mary Catherine Williams. She had arrived in New York to pursue an acting dream. And she fell into sex work because she developed an addiction to drugs. He smothered her to death after attempting to strangle her. Because she fought so hard. She fought real hard. And he couldn't strangle her.

She was not going to let him strangle her. And he ended up smothering her because that's easier to do. He dumped her body in Yorktown and she was unidentified until after he confessed and gave her name. The next victim was Jenny Soto. and that was in November 1992 and she was 23 years old, she had a drug problem. She was another one that really

put up a fight. She ended up breaking all 10 of her fingernails, clawing him up. He was clawed up. So she really went at him. Unfortunately, he got the upper hand, he strangled her, and he tossed her body into the East River.

She was found the next day. She was identified immediately from fingerprints. Oh, wow. And originally actually her boyfriend, because she had a boyfriend at the time, was suspected. But Rifkin ended up taking responsibility later. So this poor guy, everyone thought he killed her. That must have sucked. They ended up finding her personal possessions, or personal items in his possession, too, which ties him to it.

February in 1993, he murdered Leah Evans, who was 95 pounds and 4'11. Oh, my God. Yeah. She was a single mother. she had a drug addiction she became a sex worker to make ends meet and to feed her addiction unfortunately he picked her up on february 27th he drove her to an abandoned parking lot for 40 bucks they had sex he strangled her and then he took her body to the woods and buried her in a shallow grave which he has never done that's a weird one like it's very odd that he gave her a grave like an act

what we all think of when we think of grave. Do you think maybe because she had kids, he felt something? I don't know. I feel like that's weird to speculate because he's such a fucking monster. And who knows if he knew

that she had kids? You know, she might not have told them that. I think he's, I think he's just weird and manic and just experimenting on things. But it's just, it's still very weird. Eventually her hand actually

protruded out of the ground, which is how she was found because he sucks as a grave digger and he just threw her in a really shallow one. Weather elements and just rigor is going to throw that hand into the air and it's going to be found. The next one, I don't know, can you imagine. Stumbling across a hand? Do you think you tripped over a route on your hike but at someone's hand?

I'm going to be real. I've always wanted to stumble upon a body. I don't even know what I'm going to do that. You're so weird. I am who I am. Popeye. I got it going. now my Uber's here.

I mean, I'm just trying to be honest here. That's some honesty for you. I don't want anyone to die, but if someone is going to die, I'd like to stumble upon the body. That's all I'm saying. So going back to Jill Rifkin. Oh, yeah. Next victim is Lauren Marquez.

She was 28 years old, and she moved from Tennessee to New York. I think she probably came from the same reason that everybody else came. Probably, you know, pursue something greater than what she ended up doing. Rifkin tried to strangle her, but somebody walked by while he was doing it. They didn't do anything. They just kept walking. What a shitty person. So he ended up killing her by snapping her neck.

Oh my God. Yeah. And they just dumped her in the woods. She was identified via DNA in 1993. The last victim that we know of was Tiffany Bruchiani. She wanted to be a dancer. She came to New York from Louisiana. Unfortunately, she developed a heroin.

addiction. So she had to become a sex worker to feed the addiction, which tends to be just a really sad cycle that you, you know, it's the only thing that you can think of to get the quickest money and the most money. That's just to feed your addiction. But it's so dangerous. June 24th, 1993, he picked her up. He said he had been on kind of like a sex worker binge. I think he ended up seeing like four in two days. He didn't kill four in two days. But he's, yeah. He had interactions with four and two days. He strangled Tiffany in a parking lot. And then he brought her back home to Long Island, to his mother's home.

Before he did that, he stopped and bought ropes and tarp with her in the back of his truck. He wrapped her in the tarp and brought her home. His mom, when he got there, was like, hey, I got to go shopping. Because it was her car. He had her car that day. Yeah. So mom used the gene, used the car to go shopping. shopping with Tiffany in the trunk.

And she had no idea. He said mom didn't use the trunk that day. Yeah. Can you imagine if she had popped open the trunk to throw some bags in? Oh my God. When she got home, he transferred her body into the garage where he left her for three days in the summer heat. And he said they were real hot days. Yeah.

It was, I mean, June and New York is hot. It can get hot. I mean, that's just gross. Disgusting. On the way to dispose of. her is where he ended up getting arrested, which is the story we began this whole thing with. Or full circle here, guys. So when he was arrested, he was interrogated for eight hours, and he ended up confessing everything.

And here's Joel telling you, you know, that the cops did a really good job in getting that stuff out of him. Yeah, he really does. They were wearing me down. It was already getting into afternoon. I, you know, I'm tired. He just didn't sleep the night before. they're very good at what they do. You know how to bring it to the edge and then take you back and bring you back to the edge again. And then they decided to play numbers game with me. You know, I came out with more than one less than 20.

So one of the investigators asked him, you know, $20 for sex in the back seat of his mother's 1986 Toyota Cambri. Then he, then you ended up strangling her. Why? Like, why did you? Why? Why? And this was senior investigator C. Thomas C.

papers who asked this and Rifkin just said, I don't know. So he literally was like, I have no idea why I did this. It's so crazy to me. Now, he gave, he gave as many names as he could remember. Obviously, he could remember a couple. He drew maps to bodies. They ended up searching his mother's house and that's where they found his collection of trophies that he had kept. In my notes, I wrote that his room was like nasty a.F. Yeah. I showed pictures, and, like, you think my room is messy and gross.

Your room is not messy and gross. It's not as messy and gross as Joel Rifkin's room. Well, you know what? What a feather in your cap. Here I am. Hold on to that. I will. Here I am holding on to it.

I like it. His room was nasty. Yeah, it really was. And his poor mother said that he never went in his room because he's a grown-ass man at that point, and they were like, whatever. Well, he had kept bras, underwear, jewelry. driver's licenses and a library card of some of these people. And the diary. Yep, and the diary.

I mean, there was even medicine bottles with their names on it. So there was tons to connect him back to this. We're going to play a clip really quick of him kind of explaining why he did this. As the numbers started to increase, an ID, you know, okay, there has a photo, I know who that girl was, or a piece of jewelry. Okay, I know that that's from that girl. So, yeah, would it help keep the sequence and to remember who is who and remember the events?

It's fascinating to hear a serial killer who does collect because not all of them collect trophies. So it's fascinating to hear one that does say why he did it. Because the way he's saying it is like he kept it almost like a dewey decimal system of murder. Like he was like, I would like to look back. But he's also, the way he said it was kind of being like, I wanted

to remember exactly what happened to each of these people. So he probably looks at these items and relives each moment. Like it's more fantasizing. That's all it is. While they went in his room, they saw that he was clearly very into serial killers, which, you know.

So are we. Yeah. If you took a little look, in fact, maybe I should post my library. I'm going to post a picture of my bookshelf. Because if somebody came in and just looked at my books, they'd be like, yeah, something's wrong here. So I'm not going to take a whole lot of stock into that. But you don't have weird-ass newspaper clippings.

No, I don't. Don't cut things out and, like, post at them and paper-clip them together. Like, that's when it gets weird and man. Like, I don't have, like, you know, the big wall of newspaper clippings that have the red yarn that's attaching all the things. Yeah, I don't have that. Not yet at least. Don't.

Not yet. I mean, if the zodiac gets identified, I might get crazy. Okay. All right. But give me that. That's your hall pass for crazy. Yeah, that's my hall pass. So fingers crossed everybody.

So he immediately pled guilty to Tiffany's murder because they had the body. So he can really get out of that. His trial began in November 1993. They basically used his confessions, the fact that he led them to bodies. So the trial was only six months. In May 1994, he was found guilty of nine murders and sentenced to 203 years in prison. And this is what the judge said. Yeah.

It's, this is hilarious, actually. This is my favorite thing ever. Maybe I'll get this quote tattooed. Kudos to this judge. Just kidding, I'm not going to do that. What I have done can never be forgiven. But I ask you to believe me when I tell you that I will never understand the part of me that caused me to do these terrible things to your children. Not only will I go to my death, reliving these horrors, but I will go there never knowing why he did them at all.

You all think that I am nothing but a monster. And you are right. Part of me must be. Mr. Rifkin, in case there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to be sure that you spend your second life in prison also. I almost wish more judges would, like, do that. I love the judges get sassy. Sassy judges are my favorite. Yeah.

And like you hear him in that clip, he's saying like, you know, maybe, you know, I am a monster. And I don't know why I did it. It was some part of me that did it. No asshole. No Joel. It wasn't part of you who did it. Your whole body strangled these women. It wasn't part of you that was disassociated.

Like, shut up. Stop trying to be. Yeah. No one feels bad for you. Not us. You know what? I was bully too. Okay, dude.

So hit me with another thing. Okay. Actually, his defense. was going to really tried for an insanity defense, which doesn't make... They said that he had like schizophrenia. Yeah, it doesn't, none of it makes sense. You didn't, bro. And it didn't work at all.

And he pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Yeah, because his defense wanted to try for one. And they were like, that's funny. Well, they were actually going to claim that his adoption status gave him unresolved anger towards his birth mother. And that's what made him lash out at sex workers. That's really crafty and nifty. And that makes it seem like adoption is a bad thing.

Yeah, fuck those guys. And it's like, no, there's tons of people who are adopted. In fact, Jan, his sister was adopted. She didn't go kill people, as far as we know. And plenty of people get adopted into loving homes. And, you know, don't make it seem like adoption is the issue here. He was adopted at three weeks old and he was into a loving home. He didn't even know his first home.

Like, come on. So, he was put away from the general population in prison, which was probably for his benefit. So he's in a cell for like 23 hours a day. He was the most prolific serial killer in New York State history. He even eclipsed Rochester's Arthur Shockross, which we mentioned a few times. And when we get to him in another episode, you'll see he's a crazy one. And he killed 11 women between 1989 and 1990. Neighbors of Joel described him as a kind-hearted soul who would let a spider crawl out a window rather than kill it.

But they were wrong. They were very wrong. There was one woman who survived Joel. What? She is a sex worker that goes by Charlotte Webb. She survived two encounters with Rethkin. He got her again? Yeah.

So she had two encounters with him. I don't think he tried to kill her two times, but she encountered him twice. She's 27 years old. 27 years old, she's a heroin addict. And she says that he picked her up in Lower Manhattan in April 1919. So this is right when he's in the heat of everything. It was only two months before he got caught. She's lucky.

He paid her $40 for sex. And she says, quote, Some guys get rough, but I never had an inkling with him. He was just a mellow, nerdy guy. We talked about photography. He said he could get me a discount on a camera. He says that he told her his name was Jimmy. And then he was going through a divorce and struggling to support two kids in college.

What a dick. I know your word. She said, quote, he seemed lonely like me, she recalled. I told him, well, you have a friend. Stop it. So it's just, it's, all around the story is just kind of depressing in every sense of the word. It really is. I feel sad.

Yeah, this one just kind of bums you out. So that's Joe Rifkin. And he's still in prison. I did read something about him making art. artwork and selling it, which you don't want him to get any of that money. But he said he did it in half of the money was going to the victim's families. Why not all of it? Which it's like, what a fucking gentleman.

Like, oh, yeah. But, you know, exactly. Why not all of it? So I don't know what. Where's the other half going? I couldn't figure out exactly what happened there. Because I didn't think that they could make money off of that stuff. So, but I don't know.

I'm not sure. I don't think they can. I mean, I'm not a, I mean, I'm not positive on that. So that was. Joel Rifkin, guys. Wow. He's still kicking. I'm going to propose a deal.

Next week, Ted Bundy, week after that, Charlie. I like it. All right. All right. So we're really hitting the big guns. Yes. Actually, Ted is going to be a multi-party. He's too much.

His is too much to put into one. I think we'd have you here for like three weeks. Everyone has a favorite, you know? Mm-hmm. So, Tata's own. I hope you liked. Your suggestion. I hope you did.

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