"I Can Play Back the Videotape": Joel Rifkin and FBI Profiler Mark Safarik, Criminal Mindscape

Name: "I Can Play Back the Videotape": Joel Rifkin and FBI Profiler Mark Safarik, Criminal Mindscape
Uploaded: 2015-09-21
Duration: 43 min 23 s
Description: In Clinton Correctional Facility, Joel Rifkin talked a former FBI profiler through his first murders, the "videotape" he could replay in his head, and why he kept his victims' belongings.

In Clinton Correctional Facility, Joel Rifkin talked a former FBI profiler through his first murders, the "videotape" he could replay in his head, and why he kept his victims' belongings.

Subject: Joel Rifkin
Recorded: about 2009
Runtime: 43:23

Content warning: Detailed descriptions of the strangling and dismemberment of women, and of violent sexual fantasies.

The Interview

In this episode of MSNBC's *Criminal Mindscape*, Mark Safarik, a former FBI special agent who spent his last twelve years with the Bureau in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, interviewed Joel Rifkin at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The hour-long programme combines the interview with series narration, archival news and courtroom footage, and comments from state troopers, investigators, a prosecutor and Safarik himself. Safarik says he is interested in "the why question".

Historical Context

Rifkin was adopted as a baby by a Long Island couple and grew up in East Meadow. Between 1989 and 1993 he picked up women working as prostitutes, mostly in Manhattan, and strangled them. In the early hours of June 28, 1993, New York State troopers tried to stop his pickup truck, which had no licence plates, on the Southern State Parkway. After a chase that ended against a utility pole, they found the body of Tiffany Bresciani, 22, in the back. Rifkin confessed to killing 17 women. He was convicted of Bresciani's murder on May 9, 1994, and eventually of nine murders in all, with a total sentence of 203 years to life.

Circumstances of the Interview

The episode first aired on April 28, 2010, and was rebroadcast several times, most recently (as logged) on September 20, 2015. The date of the prison interview is not stated; Rifkin's remark that Bresciani would now have been 38, and Safarik's "almost 20 years later", point to about 2009. Safarik says he wanted to build rapport and that Rifkin was free to end the interview at any time; Rifkin mentions that his mother and sister visit him once a year and that his mother is "not happy about it", because "it just stirs the pot".

What the Interview Covers

Rifkin describes being bullied as a child, his teenage fantasies, his first visit to a prostitute and what he calls a growing habit of spending "every paycheck" on them. He talks through the first murder, of a woman the programme calls Suzie, in his mother's house in 1989; the killings of Julie Blackbird, Barbara Jacobs and Mary Ellen DeLuca; and the attempt to "stop the videotape" in his head. He says he began keeping items from victims after reading a book about the Green River case. He describes the night of his arrest, a plan to disappear to a cabin in Virginia, and life in prison. The programme also includes his apology to the families at sentencing.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The interview is an extended, structured on-camera conversation with Rifkin, conducted by a senior former FBI behavioural analyst and broadcast nationally. Safarik presses Rifkin repeatedly on motive and on whether he enjoyed the control he had, and offers his own reading of Rifkin as a psychopath. The programme also preserves the troopers' and investigators' accounts of the arrest and of Rifkin's list of 17 victims.

Archival Importance

Rifkin was, by his own confession, the most prolific serial killer in New York State history. This programme records his account roughly sixteen years after his arrest, before his first victim was identified in 2013 as Heidi Balch, and before the later documentary interviews of the 2020s.

Important Caveats

Rifkin's explanations of his motives are his own; the jury rejected his insanity defence. The narration dates the first murder to March 1989; other sources give February 20, 1989. Safarik's assessments are his opinions as a former profiler. The interviewees other than Safarik and Rifkin are not named in the transcript, because their on-screen captions could not be read. No YouTube captions were available, so the transcript rests on a single machine pass and still needs a listening check.

Narrator: You are about to enter the criminal mindscape of Joel Rifkin.

Mark Safarik: When you were strangling them, were you looking at them?

Joel Rifkin: Some I was, some I wasn't. Some I was holding down, some I was looking out the window. Some I was just staring off into space.

Narrator: He brutally strangled 17 women, dumping bodies and body parts all over the New York metropolitan area.

News Anchor: Joel Rifkin has told police he's a serial killer.

Commentator: As time progressed, he was killing more women with greater frequency, and still getting away with it.

Narrator: A reclusive loner, Rifkin's bloody trail goes unnoticed for four long years.

Mark Safarik: And what was it about her? She had to die.

Joel Rifkin: There were nights later on where I'd be with two other girls, and then a third girl, and she'd be the one I would kill.

Commentator: Killing was pretty much the only thing in his life that he ever did well.

Narrator: Now a veteran FBI profiler enters New York State's largest maximum security prison and steps into the criminal mindscape.

Mark Safarik: Every interview we do with an offender like Joel gives us insight into how they think.

Narrator: Former FBI Special Agent Mark Safarik spent 12 years profiling violent criminals in the Bureau's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Mark Safarik: I really am interested in sort of the why question. Why are you engaged in these different aspects? What are you feeling? You know, what's the drive?

Narrator: By confessing to the murders of 17 prostitutes, Joel Rifkin became the most prolific serial killer in New York State history.

Mark Safarik: We want to delve a little bit deeper into his mind and his thinking and his perceptions.

Narrator: Rifkin is serving 203 years at the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

Mark Safarik: When Joel walked into the interview room, I got a general sense that he felt very tense. He was looking around, he felt a little uncomfortable, a little anxious.

Mark Safarik: I appreciate you agreeing to talk with me today.

Joel Rifkin: [unclear: "Oh, thanks" / "Oh, sure"].

Mark Safarik: Yeah. So, I know a lot about you, but you probably don't know much about me. I spent 23 years with the Bureau, and spent the last 12 years in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, which is, I guess, what most people know as the profiling unit.

Joel Rifkin: Right. Thanks to TV.

Mark Safarik: Yeah, thanks to TV, right?

Mark Safarik: I want to put him at ease. I want to develop a rapport with him so that, in essence, he trusts me. But he's clearly free to answer or not answer a question, or leave the interview at any time.

Narrator: Rifkin's rampage began and ended at the home he shared with his mother and sister in East Meadow, Long Island.

Mark Safarik: Your mother's still alive, right?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah.

Mark Safarik: Does she ever visit you?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah. They come up once a year, my mom and my sister. Spoke to my mom last night.

Mark Safarik: Did you? Good. Good.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah. She's not happy about it.

Mark Safarik: But why?

Joel Rifkin: She thinks it just stirs the pot, brings all the old stuff back up.

News Anchor: Thirty-four-year-old Joel Rifkin is a self-confessed serial killer on New York's Long Island. He may have murdered as many as 17 prostitutes.

Narrator: Rifkin's crimes come to light in June 1993, when he is apprehended by New York State troopers patrolling Long Island's Southern State Parkway.

State Trooper: It was approximately three in the morning. We came across a pickup truck traveling eastbound that had no license plates on the vehicle.

Narrator: Rifkin is on his way to Republic Airport on Long Island to dump the body of his 17th victim, Tiffany Bresciani.

Commentator: Tiffany was a runaway from Metairie, Louisiana. There's a lot of girls that come to the big city and get lost, and get caught up in the underworld and the belly of it. And she was one of those. She ended up surviving by being a prostitute. He picked her up in the East Village, and they drove down to what used to be the New York Post parking lot. And he had trouble performing with her, which agitated him, obviously, and he began strangling her.

Narrator: Rifkin drives back to Long Island with Tiffany's corpse and puts her in the family garage.

Commentator: It was so unusual for his sister or his mother to go anywhere near that garage, because the garage was very much like his room. It was all filled with his junk.

Narrator: Three hot summer days pass before he gets around to disposing of the body.

Mark Safarik: Okay, so, Joel, Bresciani, the last murder, she's decomposing. You've got her in the back of your truck. And where are you going?

Joel Rifkin: I intended to go out east, and accidentally ended up exiting towards the city, and drove past the trooper car, and then the Christmas tree lit up.

Commentator: And he just opted to take flight and hope for the best. I can't even imagine, knowing his personality, that there probably wasn't even much more of a thought process than that. It was just sheer panic.

State Trooper: We reached speeds of up to 90 miles an hour. At one point he put the truck up on two wheels, so the driver side of the vehicle was actually lifted off the ground. And I thought he was going to roll it over. It was going to be over right there.

Joel Rifkin: Eventually I crashed into a utility pole, which happened to be rotten on the bottom, and it spiraled over the truck.

State Trooper: We came running up to the vehicle, and he just put his hands up like this. And then basically it was like, okay, you're going, okay, what am I going to do now? Well, I got in the car and, you know, basically knelt down and got handcuffed. He said his name was Joel Rifkin, and we're trying to get the vehicle information, and that's when you kind of noticed the strong odor coming from the vehicle. I had my window down, and I'd say within a half a mile of the scene I could smell the odor of a dead body.

Narrator: Troopers discover Bresciani's decomposed corpse in the back of Rifkin's truck. He is arrested and taken to state police barracks in Farmingdale. The team of investigators interviewing him is struck by Rifkin's calm demeanor.

Investigator: It came to a point where he asked, well, you know, have you ever done this before? Was it 100? Was it 80? Was it 90? Working down the line until he finally said 17. And that put us all back in our seats. 17. "I will write it down for you. It might be easier for me to write it down if you give me some paper and some maps."

Narrator: For the next few hours, Rifkin details all 17 homicides for investigators.

Investigator: It was almost unbelievable. Very factual, off the top of his head, with no hesitation. He wrote down that list and made his notes and sat there just like he was [unclear: "studying a writing memoir"].

Narrator: Police obtain a search warrant for Rifkin's mother's house. They search his bedroom and discover scores of items that he collected from his victims.

Commentator: When he was alone and he felt the need to relive these experiences, he would take these items, and they would remind him of the crime, and he would relive that sexual pleasure.

Investigator: Driver's licenses, jewelry, earrings, AIDS medication. You know, there was just a trove of evidence which directly linked him to so many murders. And a lot of these murders the police were not even aware of.

Mark Safarik: When you were strangling them, what were you doing while you were strangling? Were you looking at them?

Joel Rifkin: Some I was, some I wasn't. Some I was holding down, some I was looking out the window. Some I was just staring off into space.

Mark Safarik: Joel is a psychopath, which I think allows him to be successful at being a serial killer. That is, he doesn't have any empathy for his victims. He doesn't feel any remorse. And so it allows him to take these women, to kill them, and then simply really go on about his life without having, you know, any change in his behavior.

Mark Safarik: When you looked in their faces, what did you see?

Joel Rifkin: [unclear: "Do you" / "Deer"] trapped in a headlight look. Just that stare.

Mark Safarik: Did you like that look?

Joel Rifkin: Not necessarily, because I would have looked more often.

Mark Safarik: It is a personality disorder. It is not a mental health disease. Psychopaths understand the difference between right and wrong. They just simply choose to do wrong.

Mark Safarik: How did you feel, you know, when you were doing it?

Joel Rifkin: I really didn't remember it since that time, or have any thoughts that I could recall of that time.

Mark Safarik: He sees his victims just simply as objects. They're objects to satisfy needs that he had. And when he's done with them, he just simply discards them like trash.

Narrator: Before turning to serial murder, Joel Rifkin led a very ordinary life.

Mark Safarik: I think people want to see all serial killers as sort of the Charlie Mansons or the Richard Ramirezes, you know, those guys who sort of really look like they're on the fringe. But, you know, oftentimes they're not. They're guys who look very much like you and I.

Narrator: In 1959, Joel is adopted by an upper-middle-class Long Island couple.

Commentator: From a very young age, Joel tried to measure up to his father in some ways, but just, you know, perpetually fell short, and that was a great source of disappointment for him.

Narrator: Young Joel also doesn't fit in with other children. Afflicted by severe dyslexia and a lack of athletic skill and coordination, he becomes the constant target of bullies.

Joel Rifkin: I just happened to bring out the bullying [in] people.

Mark Safarik: [unclear: "Because" / "Do"] you think that they saw you as a target, an easy target?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah, yeah.

Mark Safarik: How did you cope with this, as you described, this sort of incessant taunting?

Joel Rifkin: I just, you know, absorbed it, one day at a time type of thing. I developed certain avoidance habits. I always got someplace either just on time or slightly late, because if you hung out in front of the school, that's when you had your problems. I used to stay late after school. Everybody was home. Better time to walk home.

Mark Safarik: Did you find yourself withdrawing into yourself?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah, I did a lot of things by myself.

Commentator: He would spend hours upon hours in his room. He would collect fossils, and he would collect rocks, and he would categorize them.

Narrator: In his solitude, Joel conjures a world of fantasy that soon turns sinister.

Mark Safarik: At a relatively young age, you know, probably 11 or 12, he started developing intense fantasy, sexual fantasies, of women being dominated, women being abused. Joel also described what he called gladiatorial fantasies, where women were fighting over him and he was the prize.

Mark Safarik: When do you think you actually consciously recognized that you enjoyed having these violent fantasies or thoughts? You describe this gladiator scenario of girl fights girl to the death, is that right?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah, it went to that point at times.

Mark Safarik: Or, I mean, am I mischaracterizing it at first?

Joel Rifkin: No, there were times it went to death, there were times it went to submission.

Mark Safarik: Right. Did it involve sex?

Joel Rifkin: No. As a teen, you know about sex, but it's like one of those, yeah, it exists, but what is it? So it was hard to plug that in.

Commentator: When Joel hit adolescence, I think things probably got even worse, because he developed an interest in girls who obviously had no interest in him.

Narrator: After high school, Joel plans to study journalism, but he is ashamed to go away to college a virgin. He drives into New York City to pick up a prostitute.

Mark Safarik: That's a very unusual event, to go out, strike out on your own to go see a prostitute when you're 17, 18 years old, rather than having had a sexual encounter with a girl that you know. But Joel didn't see it that way.

Mark Safarik: You remember your first woman you were ever with? Yeah, you do. What do you remember about that?

Joel Rifkin: They're not shy about their occupation in the city, right? It's right up front. She approached me: you looking for a date? Yeah, kind of. What's the deal? And she says, well... she named the prices. That was it.

Narrator: Rifkin visits more prostitutes to fill the emptiness of his life. He quickly becomes addicted to the experience.

Commentator: Even after he had sex with somebody, he would still troll around the five boroughs. He liked looking at them, you know. He didn't just like being with them, he liked looking at them. It was an all-consuming addiction for him.

Narrator: Rifkin drops out of college. He moves back in with his parents, barely supporting himself with odd jobs. All of his time and money go to feed his addiction.

Mark Safarik: How did it make you feel to go? Because ultimately you kept doing this. I mean, you, you know, you went on and on and on.

Joel Rifkin: From an occasional, you know, tension reliever, just curiosity, to, yeah, every paycheck.

Mark Safarik: Right.

Joel Rifkin: There was a time where, if I cashed my check on a Thursday, I had to get a full tank of gas that day, get whatever errands I had to do done before Friday, because by Monday it would be, you got five bucks, so I can get a tank of gas and get home.

Mark Safarik: Yeah, and that's the what. We know what you were doing, but I'm asking you why. Why did you go back? How did it make you feel to be with the prostitutes?

Joel Rifkin: Just a lot less tense, a lot less lonely.

Mark Safarik: Less tense, less lonely. What about control? What about controlling the event?

Joel Rifkin: No. It was, they were more in control than I was.

Mark Safarik: He never saw himself as, you know, being in control, even though he had the money, he was making the choices, he could say yes or no. And I wanted to see if he recognized that, that control for him was not only a part of his fantasies, but part of the relationships that he was, you know, having with these different prostitutes.

Narrator: Rifkin's fantasies soon turn more violent. He can't stop thinking about killing one of the women he patronizes.

Joel Rifkin: It was the same fantasies, sometimes expanded, and it was also the killing fantasy that would come in and out.

Mark Safarik: Okay, what is that fantasy?

Joel Rifkin: It was strangulation fantasies. It was...

Mark Safarik: Okay, tell me about that. What is this strangulation fantasy?

Joel Rifkin: Sort of like out of the movie *Frenzy*, and things like that. How would one do that? What would that be like? And I'd run through scenarios, and then dismiss it. I don't know.

Mark Safarik: With strangulation, there seems to be an intimacy to it. You know, it's contact.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah.

Mark Safarik: Of course it is.

Narrator: One night in March 1989, Rifkin's murderous dreams finally twist into reality.

Commentator: He had been with hundreds of prostitutes leading up to that night. He pretty much fantasized about killing every single one of them when he was with them. He never thought he would do it. He never thought he would act on it.

Narrator: He drives to a stroll, the area where street prostitutes work, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and picks up a young drug-addicted woman named Suzie. His mother is away on a business trip. He drives her out to Long Island, to the home that he grew up in, where he played with his sister, where he still lives with his mother.

Commentator: He plans on just having sex, although this fantasy of killing somebody is in his head, like it always is.

Joel Rifkin: We were going back to the stroll. She wanted to cop again, so I took her to the drug spot. Then I still wanted to do something with her, so we went out to the house. She got high in the bathroom again.

Commentator: He has sex with Suzie. She wants to sleep. She wants more drugs. She wants more money. You know, she's not cooperating.

Mark Safarik: You've been with her for quite a while, as you described, 10 to 11 hours. And she essentially has really been much more interested in getting drugs than... getting drugs and sleeping.

Joel Rifkin: Getting drugs and sleeping. Yep. "Any spots around here, we can get something?" "Drugs?" "Yeah." "No, gotta go back to the city for that. I don't know any place out here." We get ready to leave, and that's when I hit her.

Narrator: Rifkin picks up a souvenir artillery shell and hits Suzie in the head, again and again.

Mark Safarik: And I'm wondering, is this sort of the straw that broke the camel's back? Because all night long he's been getting her drugs and catering to her, and she hasn't really been catering to him. Is this, like, I'm exasperated at this point, I'm tired of dealing with her?

Narrator: Coming up.

Joel Rifkin: I mean, I'm watching.

Mark Safarik: You're seeing this event happening. You're reliving this, right?

Joel Rifkin: Oh, yeah. Trying to figure out what is. I can play back the videotape.

Mark Safarik: Yeah, of course you can.

Narrator: After living a secretive life consumed by violent sexual fantasies, Joel Rifkin finally steps into the abyss. At age 30, he brings a young prostitute back to his family home and brutally murders her.

Mark Safarik: The first homicide for him is really important. There's a reason that he consciously decided this particular prostitute has to die, and not the one that I was with the day before.

Mark Safarik: That's kind of a rageful event, you know, to grab an artillery shell and hit somebody in the head.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah. I don't think there was any just decisive trigger point.

Mark Safarik: It just... well, that's what I'm wondering. Is it a culmination of the whole night, of just this constant get-me-drugs, you know? In other words, I don't know, are your needs being met through this whole night, or are you just sort of the gopher?

Joel Rifkin: Well, I was the gopher, to use that word. Other nights...

Narrator: After bludgeoning Suzie with the metal shell, Rifkin finally acts out his strangulation fantasy.

Joel Rifkin: One arm was around their head, the other arm was underneath the arm, so chin, neck area.

Mark Safarik: [unclear: "I see you were smothering it" / "So you were smothering"] with your forearm.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah.

Narrator: After putting up a fierce battle for her life, Suzie finally expires.

Commentator: Joel panics. He's convinced that the cops are going to come charging to the door. He's checking the windows, he's checking the blinds, but eventually he calms himself down, goes to sleep for a few hours.

Mark Safarik: How did you feel after you were done killing her? What was that feeling like?

Joel Rifkin: When I woke up, I was like, did it or did it not happen? I wasn't... I remember going down in the basement, realizing, okay, we did do something. I remember poking her to see if she would, you know, wake up.

Mark Safarik: Did you sleep well?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah.

Mark Safarik: Did you normally sleep well?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah. Fell out for about six hours.

Mark Safarik: First homicide?

Joel Rifkin: Yep.

Mark Safarik: Then what happened to her?

Commentator: He woke up, he went down, slept for several hours, had to get her out of the house.

Narrator: The next morning, he proceeds to dismember the body and put different parts of the body in plastic bags.

Mark Safarik: What did you do with her?

Joel Rifkin: [unclear: "How I cut up"] with the idea of small packages: easy to hide, easy to make go away, easy to take out with the trash.

Mark Safarik: What made you decide to do that, or to take that route? It's messy. It takes a lot of time.

Joel Rifkin: Just what I had said: if it, you know, make everything as small as possible, make it all disappear. That was the overwhelming thought I had.

Narrator: He takes the bags containing Suzie's remains and scatters them in both New York and New Jersey.

Commentator: He goes to extraordinary lengths in his first homicide to make sure that this victim isn't found. But even if she had been found, it's very unlikely there's any way that she would have ever been linked back to Joel.

Narrator: Almost immediately, Joel returns to seeing prostitutes. He vows to himself to not kill again. But each time, he relives in his mind the act of killing Suzie. Each time, he feels the urge to kill.

Mark Safarik: Once Joel committed his first murder, it can be described that he, in essence, hatched. And this killer was, you know... suddenly he went from being a frequenter of prostitutes to an out-and-out killer.

Mark Safarik: So then there's this extended period of time. What's going on in that 18 months? Are you fantasizing? Did you think back on Suzie?

Joel Rifkin: Well, that was, yeah. That whole night, we just keep repeating. Some nights it was terrifying. Other nights it was pleasant. It was exhilarating. The moments of terror, you know, it just, it ran its course.

Mark Safarik: Why would it be terrifying?

Joel Rifkin: Oh, I was still in denial that I even did it, at times.

Mark Safarik: You're seeing this happening.

Joel Rifkin: Well, I'm trying to also [unclear: "that"] and remember what came after, as far as... I mean, I'm watching.

Mark Safarik: You're seeing this event happening. You're reliving this, right?

Joel Rifkin: Oh, yeah. [Trying to] figure out what is. I can play back the videotape.

Mark Safarik: Yeah, of course you can. Almost 20 years later.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah.

Mark Safarik: But yeah, I have no doubt you can play it back.

Joel Rifkin: Yep.

Mark Safarik: This is part of the reliving process for him, is this ability to play back these murders in his mind. He sees each one of them. He knows each one of them. Not only does he see himself doing it, but I think it's arousing to him. It's exciting to him. He won't admit it, and he keeps that fairly flat affect when he's talking about it, but clearly he has that ability to do that, and he's probably done it many times.

Narrator: Coming up.

Mark Safarik: [unclear: "Would you like it?" / "Did you like it?"] How does it make you feel, [unclear: "this triangular" / "the strangling"]?

Mark Safarik: This is a very powerful time, a time when essentially they're controlling the life of the victim. They're playing God.

Narrator: After strangling a young prostitute to death, budding serial killer Joel Rifkin spends months reliving the grisly events before killing again.

Mark Safarik: Maybe Joel just hadn't reached a point where the compulsion to kill again had reached a zenith where he needed to act out. Sometimes it's years and sometimes it's weeks. But for him it was 18 months.

Narrator: In late 1990, Joel picks up Julie Blackbird under the Manhattan Bridge. His mother is again out of town, so they drive back to East Meadow, and Julie spends the night.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah, she slept some of that time, took a shower some of that time. Watched TV.

Mark Safarik: Kind of like a relationship.

Joel Rifkin: Well, just hanging out, killing time.

Mark Safarik: Yeah, like friends.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah.

Mark Safarik: If you didn't know who you were listening to and what the outcome was, you would believe that they were a couple, you know, on a date.

Narrator: Before driving her back to the city, Joel agrees to go to an ATM machine and withdraw some extra money for Julie.

Joel Rifkin: We were leaving, and I hit her from behind once, and then strangled her.

Mark Safarik: Why did you hit her?

Joel Rifkin: [unclear: "Probably a star"].

Mark Safarik: No, but why? [unclear: "Why did motivating"]? Why? I'm not asking, you know, why did you hit... I know you hit her so that you could incapacitate her. I mean, that's clear. I'm asking you the why. What was the reason that you hit her?

Mark Safarik: He just... that just completely escapes him.

Mark Safarik: I mean, what does she do? Because you already, you have brought other prostitutes back to your mother's house that you didn't kill. Had she done anything that you can think of, you know, over that five or six hours, that culminated in something where...

Joel Rifkin: No, I just basically decided, you know, to do it.

Mark Safarik: I'm sure there is something in there that's related to, you know, finally, I'm just not going to take any more from these people that are essentially walking all over me, and I'm going to strike out.

Mark Safarik: Then what happened? You hit her with a table leg.

Joel Rifkin: Hit her, strangled her.

Mark Safarik: [unclear: "Would you like it?" / "Did you like it?"] How did that make you feel, [unclear: "this triangular" / "the strangling"]?

Joel Rifkin: I wasn't really aware of liking it. It was more of, I wanted it done. I wanted it over with. And that point had passed, and I was still strangling her.

Mark Safarik: Strangulation takes minutes of considerable pressure on the neck to actually cause somebody to die. So there is an extended period of time in which you are essentially face to face with your victim. And for many offenders this is a very powerful time. It's a time when essentially they're controlling the life of the victim. They're playing God.

Mark Safarik: Do you recall feeling anything? Do you like the control? Did you like the power that you had over her?

Joel Rifkin: I wasn't aware of it at the time.

Mark Safarik: Okay. Well, you're aware of it now?

Joel Rifkin: I think of it because it's been mentioned. You're not the first one to mention it.

Mark Safarik: When you ask a psychopath, well, how did you feel about that, they sort of rock back, because they don't really know how they felt about it, because they didn't feel anything.

Narrator: Rifkin dismembers Julie Blackbird and puts her body parts in cement-filled containers. He has a different disposal plan this time, throwing Julie's remains in the waterways surrounding Manhattan.

Mark Safarik: Were you ever concerned about getting stopped by police with all these body parts in your car? I mean, was it ever a concern?

Joel Rifkin: No.

Mark Safarik: No. If they had stopped you, would they have seen the body parts?

Joel Rifkin: Depending on when. Most of everything was in the trunk. It was what looked like a bucket of cement on the passenger side.

Narrator: Months pass. When his mother is out of town, Rifkin brings a number of prostitutes home to East Meadow, but he doesn't harm any of them. Then in July 1991 he picks up 31-year-old Barbara Jacobs. His darkest urges are again threatening to rage out of control.

Joel Rifkin: I remember sitting in the living room for a while, debating if I should just fantasize or if I should actually strangle her. I remember debating it for a while.

Mark Safarik: You're debating whether to fantasize about strangling her, or whether to go ahead and actually do it?

Joel Rifkin: Yeah. There comes a point where, well, I can get the first videotape to stop if there's a second one. If there's a third, they'll get all jumbled together and they won't make sense anymore, and I can make it stop.

Mark Safarik: So he's sort of saying, I did it so that I could stop doing them. But what I see happening is that he's doing them because he likes doing it. It makes him feel good, and it doesn't have anything to do with stopping.

Commentator: This time he hits her with the same type of object that he killed Julie Blackbird with. He hits her hard enough to pretty much render her semi-conscious, and then he sort of takes his time strangling and watching her expire.

Narrator: Rifkin dumps Jacobs's body in the Hudson River, but he's careless about the spot he chooses.

Commentator: Barbara's body was discovered within a couple of hours after he dumped it, by firefighters who were training. But for Joel, that wasn't even a concern anymore, because he was getting emboldened by the fact that nobody was linking him to any of these homicides. He was getting good at this, and getting relaxed about it.

Joel Rifkin: Somewhere around the third, fourth or fifth, I'm beginning to, on one level, like, okay, there's something going on. I've done this more than once. I keep thinking about it. So I started going into the bookstores and the libraries, trying to find answers. And one of the books I got at the time was *The Search for the Green River Killer*. What the book turned out to be was not just reporting on that case, but it became also a how-to.

Mark Safarik: I think that Joel recognized what he was, and he was trying to relate to it in terms of, you know, like, I'm not the only person that's doing this.

Mark Safarik: Are you saying that you kept things because you read this in the book?

Joel Rifkin: Right. [unclear: "Books had to keep things" / "Book said to keep things"], so I started keeping things.

Mark Safarik: Those were clearly things that could link you to any number of the victims.

Joel Rifkin: Yep. I don't know. There were things that made sense, there were things that didn't make sense.

Mark Safarik: I think he doesn't have an explanation because he really did use those items. He used them to fantasize about the crimes, to essentially relive those events in his mind, and he didn't want to get rid of them.

Narrator: Coming up.

Mark Safarik: The fact that she said, I want to die, do you think she was just at a low point? You don't think she really wanted to die, do you?

Joel Rifkin: I always put it in terms of, if she didn't, she would have fought more. No fighting at all, no wriggling at all. Just do it.

Narrator: After claiming his first three victims without raising the slightest suspicion, serial killer Joel Rifkin becomes bolder and more lethal.

Commentator: As the homicides started to compress in time, he needed to have that feeling of well-being or excitation or arousal. You know, he needed that more.

Narrator: Labor Day weekend 1991, Rifkin picks up 22-year-old Mary Ellen DeLuca.

Commentator: She's interested in really nothing other than getting high. She has Joel taking her to different locations. He's incapable of just, you know, demanding what he wants, or telling her, now it's my time to be taken care of.

Narrator: After chasing drugs with her for 10 hours, Joel finally convinces Mary Ellen to accompany him to a motel room.

Mark Safarik: No sex? She didn't want to have sex?

Joel Rifkin: No. When she finally agreed, it was on very limited, her terms type of thing.

Mark Safarik: And how did that make you feel?

Joel Rifkin: I went with it. Then she started crying and carrying on: I just came from rehab, I can't be doing this anymore, my life is crap, I wish I was dead, my boyfriend's going to break up with me. I just grabbed her from the front and strangled her. And the weird thing with her is, she put out the least resistance of anybody.

Mark Safarik: Why do you think that is?

Joel Rifkin: I think she was just at a very, very low point in her life. She was maybe suicidal, in what she was saying. She just had had it.

Mark Safarik: Why did you kill her?

Joel Rifkin: [It] was probably out of frustration. I was hearing echoes of how my month and week had just gone, you know?

Mark Safarik: Joel's listening to her, and he's feeling exactly the same thing. His whole life is, you know, not going right. And like, how dare she really complain about all of this, when I'm feeling this? And now she said, oh, she wants to die. And I think Joel's basically like, well, I'm just going to oblige her.

Mark Safarik: The fact that she said, I want to die, do you think she was just at a low point? You don't think she really wanted to die, do you?

Joel Rifkin: If she didn't, she would have fought more. No fighting at all. No wriggling at all. Just do it. It was about the attitude I got back from her.

Narrator: He dumps DeLuca's body in the woods, 60 miles north of New York City. This time, it doesn't take long for him to strike again.

Commentator: As time went on, I think what he really had was an addiction to the intoxicating excitement that he got from the perpetration of the homicides, the strangulation.

Narrator: A few weeks later, Joel picks up 31-year-old Yun Lee on the Allen Street stroll during daylight hours, and strangles her in his car.

Commentator: The intervals between the murders was decreasing, so that the more he did, the more he enjoyed it. And I think that the more he got away with it, he saw how easy it was for him to do this, and therefore there was no reason for him to wait.

Narrator: By the winter of 1991, the pace of Rifkin's killing accelerates dramatically. Over the next 16 months, he claims 11 more victims.

Commentator: It was like a runaway train. You know, he just couldn't stop at this point.

Narrator: Most are strangled in his car and then dumped in the water surrounding New York City. All but two of the women's remains are recovered by police, but they draw no connection between the homicides.

Commentator: He actually became cavalier about it. You know, there was an instance of him driving into a gas station after killing a victim and having the body sitting up in the passenger seat. Some of the bodies he put in trunks and put them in rivers. Other people were in... he actually dug little graves for them. There was one victim he left by Kennedy Airport underneath a mattress. So he was scattering this evidence all over the place, and I think he was confident that he wasn't going to be caught.

Narrator: All that changed on the night of June 28, 1993. Two weeks after confessing to 17 homicides, Joel Rifkin pleads not guilty to the murder of Tiffany Bresciani. In the spring of 1994, Joel Rifkin goes on trial for the murder of Tiffany Bresciani, his final victim. He pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.

Prosecutor: We had to really litigate the deaths of all 17 young women to show the jury that this was not the workings of somebody who didn't know what they were doing or didn't realize it was wrong, but instead the workings of a mind that was very calculating, very intentional. He knew very well that it was wrong, and he took extraordinary steps to prevent himself from being caught.

Narrator: The jury needs just two and a half hours to reach a verdict.

Court Clerk: As to count one, murder in the second degree, what is your verdict?

Jury Foreperson: Guilty.

Prosecutor: The evidence of his guilt was extraordinarily strong, with the dead body in the back of his car. And the insanity defense was so poor and weak that I never expected a jury to give it much consideration, other than, you know, a few minutes to decide that there's nothing there.

Narrator: Rifkin is given the maximum sentence of 25 years to life.

Mark Safarik: And if you hadn't been caught that night on the expressway, I mean, if [you] had been able to dump Bresciani's body, we wouldn't be talking about 17. We would be talking about 23 or 28, you know. I mean, I don't think [you] would have stopped. Do you?

Joel Rifkin: I had a plan to.

Mark Safarik: Well, you had a plan to after number one.

Joel Rifkin: Yeah, but now I was taking physical steps. Whether the plan would have actually, yeah, worked...

Mark Safarik: What were the physical steps?

Joel Rifkin: Well, I was about to [unclear: "see a real to"] down south, western tail end of Virginia.

Mark Safarik: Okay.

Joel Rifkin: Little part just on the West Virginia [border]. Doing a Unabomber, getting a cabin out in the woods and just surviving. Now, if you have $100, it's got to be survival money. You can't go play at the truck stops, because if you do, you don't eat for a week.

Mark Safarik: No, but you would have just driven into, you know, one of the towns, the big cities in southwest Virginia. My guess is that when you would have found the stroll, you would have needed it. That's where you were operating. You would have had to do it. You could have been living in a cabin, but you wouldn't have stayed in a cabin. I mean, do you really think you would have?

Joel Rifkin: Well, that's, again, one of the lies you tell yourself.

Mark Safarik: I think he is acknowledging that that need still exists. It is a compulsion. It's a need-driven behavior that he feels that he has to have. He felt it for 17 times. If he hadn't been caught, he would have continued. He would have just continued until he was caught.

Narrator: Over the next 19 months, Rifkin pleads guilty to the murders of seven more women.

Joel Rifkin: I want you to know that I am sorry for what I have done to you and your daughters. 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.

Narrator: He is sentenced to a total of 203 years in prison.

Speaker At Sentencing: 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.

Narrator: Today, Rifkin is housed in a special unit of the prison for high-risk and high-profile inmates. He claims to feel more at home in prison than he ever did in the free world.

Commentator: It has nothing to do with celebrity, because there is plenty of other high-profile people in that facility as well. But because there are so many sexual offenders, nobody looks at him as if he is particularly deviant.

Mark Safarik: You have been incarcerated many years. How are you doing? What is going on day to day here?

Joel Rifkin: Do my programs like everybody else. Right now I am going to [unclear: "tell the shop"]. The day has a rhythm, and you just go with it.

Mark Safarik: Do you get hassled here at all?

Joel Rifkin: No, not really. A few guys, you know: can you sign this for me? Can you draw something for me? That would be a greater stress, I think, in population. There's this belief that anything serial killer related is worth something.

Mark Safarik: Did you ever see any of those women that you killed as individuals?

Joel Rifkin: More so now, yeah.

Mark Safarik: How?

Joel Rifkin: Okay, Bresciani, I think, was 22. So at 38, would she still be hitting the pipe, or would she have family now? I mean, what are the odds of her taking a career life, a family life, getting out of the street thing she was in?

Mark Safarik: Right, but does that matter to you?

Joel Rifkin: At times it does.

Mark Safarik: Yeah.

Mark Safarik: When it comes to those people, I think intellectually he knows he did wrong. He knows he should feel bad. But as far as having feelings that most of us would take for granted, he's devoid of them. He doesn't really see them as people, as having feelings or emotions, or being related to other people as mothers, sisters. He doesn't get that. And I don't think he'll ever get that. It's just in his nature as being, I think, a psychopath. That will never be a piece that he understands. ---