Who Is Joel Rifkin?
Rifkin was born on January 20, 1959, to two unwed college students. He was adopted three weeks later by an upper-middle-class couple living on Long Island, N.Y., Jeanne and Ben Rifkin. Three years later, the couple also adopted a baby girl, Jan.
Rifkin had a difficult time fitting in, but by all accounts, he was raised by loving parents. When he was 28 and living at home, his father died by suicide after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. That same year, on August 22, 1987, Rifkin was arrested during a prostitution sting in Hempstead, N.Y., after he offered an undercover female police officer money for sex.
By 1989, he was unemployed and living with his mom, who had no idea that her son had killed a woman in the home they shared. After his 1993 arrest, investigators searched his mother’s home and found mementos he saved from his victims, including driver’s licenses, underwear and jewelry.
Rifkin has granted several interviews behind bars and said if he wasn’t caught that morning, he would have kept killing.
“As much as I say I wanted to stop, there probably would have been others,” Rifkin told CBS News, admitting that he thinks of “people as things” and that the women he targeted traveled a lot, so they could disappear for months without notice.
When a CBS reporter asked Rifkin why he did it, he said, “I don't know. Why do people try to quit smoking for their entire lives?”
His mom and sister told The New York Times in 1993 that they were “destroyed” after learning about Rifkin’s crimes.
Joel Rifkin’s Victims
Rifkin admitted to killing 17 women. Two victims are still unidentified and one was never found.
In February 1989, Rifkin drove to New York City, where he met 25-year-old Heidi Balch.
His mother was out of town, so he brought Balch back to their house and killed Balch there. He dismembered her body and put her head in a paint can, which he left in the woods on a golf course in Hopewell, N. J. He disposed of her legs further north and dumped the rest of her remains in the East River.
Balch’s head was found on the seventh hole of the golf course and her legs a month later. She was not identified until 2013.
“It was a long, intense investigation,” former Hopewell Detective Bruce Carnall, who was the lead on the case from 1989 until his retirement in 2005, told NJ.com. “This could have been easily put aside and forgotten.”
By the time Balch was identified, Rifkin was already serving his 200-year sentence for nine murders and had told police his first victim was named Susie. Police identified Balch after they found her aunt and father, who both submitted DNA to be tested. Balch had gone by many aliases, including “Susie” and “Susan.”
About a year after he murdered Balch, he killed Julie Blackbird, once again at his mother’s home. Her body was never recovered.
In 1991, he killed Barbara Jacobs, 31, Mary Ellen DeLuca, 22, Yun Lee, 31, Lorraine Orvieto, 28 and two unidentified women.
In 1992, Rifkin killed Mary Ann Holloman, 39, Iris Sanchez, 25, Violet O’Neill, 21, and 33-year-old Anna Lopez, who was found in a wooded area off Interstate 84 in Putnam County, according to The New York Times. Not all of the women Rifkin killed were sex workers, but most, including Lopez, were.
“I want to get all these families together, and I want everybody to be there in court with me,” Lopez’s mother said at the time. “I want to show these girls, these prostitutes, have families who care. They were probably alone on the streets, but not in the world.”
In May 1992, the body of Leah Evans, a 28-year-old mother of two, was found by a family in Southampton, N.Y. Jenny Soto's body washed up along the rocks of the Harlem River in November 1992. Lauren Marquez, a 28-year-old mother of two, was found dead in Westhampton.
The disappearance of Mary Catherine Williams, 31, was only linked to Rifkin after her credit cards were found among Rifkin’s belongings after his 1993 arrest. Her mother, Doris Williams, said she was a struggling actress who moved to NYC from Charlotte, N.C. She did not show up at home for Christmas in 1992, Williams said.
Then in June 1993, police found Tiffany Bresciani, another aspiring actress who moved to New York from Louisiana, whose body was found after police stopped Rifkin’s vehicle.
Most of the women’s bodies had been stuffed into plastic bags, boxes and oil drums and were dumped in the East River, Hudson River, Coney Island Creek or New Creek in Brooklyn.
Joel Rifkin’s Life in Prison
At his 1996 sentencing, Rifkin, now 67, issued a statement in which he apologized to the families of his victims.
"I want you to know that I am sorry for what I have done to you and your daughters," he said. "I will go to my grave carrying the deaths of these innocent women with me."
He was first incarcerated at Attica Correctional Facility, but after several conflicts with other prisoners, he was moved to solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for four years. He was moved in 2000 to the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York and is now housed at Green Haven Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison. He is eligible for parole in 2197, at the age of 238.
The listing described the property as a well-maintained home that “offers a spacious and versatile layout with sun-filled living areas, an updated eat-in kitchen, generous sized bedrooms, and plenty of storage throughout.” It doesn’t mention the murders.
