Hey weirdos, before we unleash today's macabre mystery, we were wondering, have you ever heard of Wondery Plus?
It's like a secret passage to an ad free layer with early access to episodes.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple podcast or Spotify.
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar.
Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking.
Listening can lead to positive changes in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall wellbeing.
Audible has an incredible selection of over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals all in one easy app.
Find the genres you love and discover new ones.
Explore bestsellers like my sister's title. new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time.
I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk and I am absolutely loving it.
I love all the different narrators. I love Audible.
There's more to imagine when you listen.
Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free.
Visit audible.com slash morbid. Think about the most disturbing government secrets you've learned from history.
Now imagine discovering one that begins in a hospital room and leads straight to classified military operations that were buried for decades.
Listen to a redacted medical mystery a special episode from Redacted and Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ash. I'm Elena. And this is Morbid. Hey guys.
We are back for another week 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... Let's 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 plummet downhill.
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 watched 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 at all.
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 know. I was like, girl. Her veil was all the different...
I think you say, like, provinces. Is that what it is?
Sounds good. Yeah. It was all the little places and, like... england i don't know in the england i don't fucking know there's a bunch of places on our mail It's like the Soviet Union of Russia.
Yeah, exactly like that. Actually, that was outlined on her veil.
I'm sure it was. Gotta represent Russia.
I don't think there was really any other true crime 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 Triangle. know the fridge guys it's been a really long week it's 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. We both use tools.
It was a razor. hey it's like a 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 Pill. Cool. I like it.
That's another good band name. Band name.
Jagged Little Bitch. Nailed it. Jagged Little Bitch.
I love it. Well, I guess now that we've enthralled you so much, we should probably get right into it.
Here we go. One, two, three, go. So, June 28th, 1993.
Set the scene. My grandmother's birthday.
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 Spargaren?
Sorry if I said that wrong, Debra. Sorry, Chica.
Use a boss. And Sean Ruin. Sorry if I said that wrong, Sean.
I think it's Ruin. I watched a documentary.
Ruin. Sounds better. So, Debra Spargaren and Sean Ruane.
Spotted a 1984 Mazda pickup truck driving around with no license plates at about 315 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.
Mm-mm. Get pulled over for a busted taillight.
Have two dead bodies in your car. Nothing happened, though.
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.
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 pull 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.
Uh, 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. So they went over to the police car.
I'm like, tap, tap, tap. Hey, 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 Bresciani, and in his words he said, I killed her.
She was a prostitute. I mean, thanks. All right.
He really was. I did find a fun little quote from investigator Dwayne Russell. that basically when he talked to Joel Rifkin about this situation, he said, well...
I picked up this hooker near Allen 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 for 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 dates 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 Jean? 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 Jean or Jeanne Rifkin 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 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 taken 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 that.
Like I have no reason. He's literally like confused about it.
Yeah. So he was very different from like say Edmund Kemper.
Right. Who had it. Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare.
Exactly. He just started out real bad. 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.
Well, yeah. I wasn't bullied in school. But...
Not everybody, but... A lot of people get bullied and don't turn to serial murder.
Yeah, like... 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. The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.
The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption, and magic.
Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mare exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.
Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the Wondery app.
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 shit. 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 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 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.
To be honest, 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.
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 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.
That's true. 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 it's real high 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.
I was just going to say the fact that you had to say what's mine, sir.
She likes to shit on me. I'm being bullied.
You're shoveling the material I'm digging myself a hole No don't worry I live a simple life I live a simple life I enjoy the simple things.
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.
He was 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 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 still attempted to 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 wrap party, and they didn't invite him.
And I guess he was like... devastated by it.
Which that sucks. The only thing I'm gonna 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 them the middle finger and never look back.
That's all you got to do. 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. Which is, like...
You're the reason he's a bummer. You're the reason he's doomed.
You guys are doomed. Yeah, they're doomed.
So of course this made him completely isolated.
Like mistreatment like this is gonna 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.
When you start to believe it. 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. Yeah. basically the movie is about a serial killer in london who rapes and barters 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 right they don't say no What he needed and he could kind of fantasize at the same time, you know?
And he was more in control. Exactly. He felt like he was the big guy on campus here.
Oh. 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.
Yeah. He used this gift to troll for sex workers in Hempstead and Manhattan.
His fantasies still had this recurrent theme of rape, strangling and sadism.
So that's not good. Especially when you start fantasizing about that stuff, eventually fantasizing isn't going to be enough as we've seen with so many of these people.
You're going to see, I mean, the more we do these different people, 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.
He just didn't care. Because he just wasn't doing it.
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're not making enough money to survive.
So he'd end 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.
So obviously this family was a close family.
I was watching this documentary today. And he, him and his dad argued a lot because his dad was, I think his dad was like an engineer.
Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was a structural engineer.
Right, so obviously very smart. 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 gonna do well, but... like, based on past, like, occurrences.
Performances. 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 when Joel was supposed to get his midterm grade.
Oh that's really sad. But 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 doozy. 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. Yeah. 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, yeah. That makes sense. It was in March of 1989 that he finally followed through on these fantasies and killed his first victim.
Unfortunately, he's first victim when 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 he picked her up and the time they got to his house or his mother's house 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.
He started getting 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.
This thing. It's a big... It's a big thing.
Who just has that lying around? He just apparently had one lying around.
Normal. awful. So that's pretty intense.
He picked up this Howard Sir artillery shell and he severely beat her with it and she lived like through that 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.
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 sleep.
He went through a REM cycle. Once he woke up from his nap, he dismembered her with an X-Acto 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.
Got fed up and I started hitting basically beer till my arms got tired.
And then we wrestled on the floor and 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. you'll find you'll see in these little clips he kind of reminds me of like an ed kemper btk when he talks because he's very chill very matter of fact about it And he's very aware that it's messed up.
And it's like, these are the people that are kind of fascinating when they're...
A little self-aware later. Well, he describes himself as a monster at one point.
Yeah, and what she is. Yeah. Which could, again, could be just a very intelligent psychopath pandering.
Mm. 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 this is so fun 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, beat her with this howitzer 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 out.
Because he's thinking dental records and fingerprints.
What the? 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.
If he were to kill someone. 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 can, 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 golfer 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. Literally. That's why I stay inside.
So she went unidentified until 2013. Her name is Heidi Balk.
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.
Heads have DNA. Even millennial heads have DNA.
Okay. 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 um 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 way. You know what he also said?
He said after the first one, he vowed 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.
I had a bad day. Valid reason, right? To beat someone with a table leg.
I have bad days every now and then too, Joel.
And I don't beat people with tables. He ends up, after he beat her with the 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.
Because he was above it. Well, he said he was, he was super into Ted Bundy and Ted Bundy was all about.
Was 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 him. Yeah, like, why?
But, like Ash said, he was like, you know what?
I had a line. I'm too good for that. 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 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 makes sure that he dismembers and places things in places that people shouldn't be able 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. 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 killer of the missing men of Toronto.
Because Bruce MacArthur was also a landscaper, and he used his landscaping business to hide these bodies.
So it's funny that what an odd profession to like be a similarity.
Yeah. 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. uh in the end he strangled her too that's how yeah this is it's i feel like i should just say 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 touch it. 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 that happened. This recliner is haunted.
That was a lot. So he wraps her in plastic and puts her in a cardboard box.
He dumps that cardboard 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 found 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 MO is to take all the responsibility off himself and just be like, I don't know why.
It was a monster who did it. It's not me.
They all 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's just lazy yeah apparently he did this happened in september she wasn't found until october so she was out there For a month.
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 Yoon Lee.
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. 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. She was a person.
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 Shawcross, anybody who targets sex workers.
In people that are kind of a marginalized population of people.
Right. They're kind of seen as a lot of times they're referred to as less dead people.
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 they're able to look at them like Which is horrible.
These women, though, had a lot of family.
Mothers, sisters, brothers, all these husbands, boyfriends.
They all showed up. And we're all devastated.
So he's a piece of shit. So yet another victim went unidentified and is 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 fellatio.
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.
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 crazier.
It was like an A&E documentary. I don't even know what it's called.
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 Ressler, who is a former FBI criminologist who's kind of well-known.
About this case, he said there's a blend of hatred and sexual desire in men who prey 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 were 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 gonna 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 wealthy family and was 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 fellatio.
So this is his new thing all of a sudden.
I tried looking stuff up, but I got kind of creeped out looking it up. 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 seems to be very old. over the place.
He's just trying out different... He has the same MO of strangling and 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, a whole year later.
Whoa. In the water? Yeah. So that was a rough one.
So the next one was Mary Ann Holliman. He strangled her the same way that he did the last two.
Mid fellatio. What the fuck? 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.
For sure. there was some people who later when he was caught were like oh wait a second maybe he's Right.
It doesn't turn out that it makes any sense because some of the things even happened after he was caught.
Caught and detained. 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.
Right next to each other. It's like, 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 real hard. 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.
He should have just started with that and ended with that.
Just go with that, man. 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.
Maybe he never would have found her, probably. 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 at the airport, there's people in and out of there at all times.
Hundreds, 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... 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 Ana 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 from people.
But this was a noticeable thing, I guess, because she had specific earrings on.
The next victim was Violet O'Neill. He ended up bringing her back to his house.
Now, these other ones... I think we're a little different because he wasn't bringing them back to the house.
Must have been murdered in the car. Exactly.
So he brought Violet O'Neil 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.
But she fought 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 ten 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 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. uh-huh that's a weird one like that is weird it's very odd that he gave her a grave like an actual 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 him that.
I think he's just weird and manic and just experimenting on things.
But 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 gravedigger and he just threw 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 want to find that either.
I know. Can you imagine? Stumbling across a hand.
Do you think you tripped over a root 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 you're talking about.
I am who I am. Popeye I gotta go now my Uber's here I mean I'm just being I'm trying to be honest here That's some honesty for you.
I don't want anyone to die but if someone is gonna die I'd like to stumble upon the body.
That's all I'm saying. So going back to Joel 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 then he just dumped her in the woods.
She was identified via DNA in 1993. The last victim that we know of was Tiffany Brusciani.
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.
It's the only thing that you can think of to get the quickest money and the most money 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, he had, he had interactions with four in 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 gotta go shopping.
Because it was her car. She had her car that day.
Yeah. So mom used the jean, used the car to go shopping with Tiffany in the trunk.
Did she? Wrapped in a tarp. 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?
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 in 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 so when he was arrested he was interrogated for eight hours and he ended up confessing everything And here's Joel telling you that the cops did a really good job getting that stuff out of him.
Yeah, he really does. They were wearing me down.
It was already getting into afternoon. you know i'm tired he 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 it back and then bring it back to the edge again.
And then they decided to play a numbers game with me.
And I came out with... More than one less than 20.
So one of the investigators asked him, you know, 20 bucks for sex in the backseat of his mother's 1986 Toyota Camry. then he then you ended up strangling her why like why did you what why And this was senior investigator C. Thomas Capers 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 as many names as he could remember.
He drew maps to bodies. 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 af yeah it 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.
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.
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, You know, okay, that 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, it would help keep the sequence and to remember who was who and remember the events. 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... So are we, everyone. 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 like weird ass newspaper clippings.
No, I don't. Don't cut things out. I don't. like post it them and paper clip them together.
Like that's when it gets weird. 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.
Not yet. I mean, if the Zodiac gets identified, I might get crazy.
Okay. All right. Forgive 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 couldn't 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 long. 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 gonna.
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. 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.
Like really bring the hammer down on these assholes.
Sassy judges are my favorite. Yeah. And, like, you hear him in that clip, he's saying, like, you know, I am a monster.
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. No one feels bad for you.
No one feels bad for you. Not us. You know what?
I was bullied too. Okay, dude. So hit me with another thing.
Okay. Actually, his defense was gonna really tried for an insanity defense.
Which doesn't make sense. 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.
It's supposed to be a beautiful. He was adopted at three weeks old and he was into a loving home.
He didn't even know his first mom. It had nothing to do with that.
Like, come on. Getting real. 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 Shawcross, 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 Rifkin.
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.
Tell me. She's 27 years old. She's a heroin addict.
She says that he picked her up in lower Manhattan in April 1993.
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. no you weren't 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 Jill Rifkin. And he's still in prison.
I did read something about him making artwork and selling it.
Which, you don't want him to get any of that money.
But he said he did it and 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. Exactly. Why not all of it?
So I don't know what happened. 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.
But I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't think they can.
I mean, I'm not... Yeah, I mean, I'm not positive on that.
So, 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-parter.
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 son. I hope you liked. Your suggestion.
I hope you did. This was very interesting.
Thanks for throwing it our way. This was fun.
It's fun to do suggestions. Remember, just throw them our way.
We'll try to get them done when we hear them.
DM us. DM us, get us on Facebook, all that good stuff.
And subscribe to the podcast. Please. And rate us.
Rate and review. stars rate and review we promise we'll eventually be able to like reward you for your rates and reviews yes And we need constructive criticism.
Exactly. We want to know what you think.
So let us know. We hope we're providing you with some, you know... useful information so yeah um find us on itunes google play we're on stitcher We're on blueberry.
That's it. i don't know how you say it find us on blueberry we're on facebook and instagram I mean, we're everywhere.
So just find us. Whatever you're listening to a podcast on, we're going to be on it.
If we're not on it now, I'll get our asses on it.
Find us. And we will see you next week when we cover Ted. so hey guys we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird bye bye If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
