July 9, 2025

Joel the Ripper

Joel the Ripper
Tapes from the Darkside | Crime & Psychology
Joel the Ripper
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In the suburbs of Long Island, behind the quiet streets and manicured lawns, something dark was festering. Joel Rifkin, a man with a soft voice, thinning hair, and a passion for gardening, harbored a secret—one that would horrify the nation.

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Works cited:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15966204/

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H do you trapped in headlight? Look just a stare?

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Tapes from the dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality.

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Listener discretion is advised.

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In the suburbs of Long Island behind the Quiet Streets

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and manicured lawns. Something dark was festering. Joel Rifkin, a

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man with a soft voice, thinning hair, and a passion

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for gardening, harbored a secret, one that would horrify the nation.

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Over the span of four years, Rifkin murdered at least

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seventeen women. Most were sex workers. Most were forgotten, but

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Rifkin remembered every single one. Today we dig beneath the

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surface of America's most prolific and perhaps most overlooked serial killer.

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Joel David Rifkin was born on January twentieth, nineteen fifty nine,

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but he wasn't born into the Rifkin family. He was

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adopted as an infant by Bernard and Jean Rifkin, a

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middle class couple in East Meadow, New York. From a

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young age, Joel struggled. He had undiagnosed dyslexia, and his

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academic performance suffered. Teachers described him as shy, withdrawn socially awkward.

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He never quite fit in. Rifkin was bullied constantly. He

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became obsessed with death and violence and isolation. By high school,

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his sexual fantasies had taken a dark turn. He was

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intrigued by the idea of domination of control. Joel graduated

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high school barely. He attended several colleges but never earned

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a degree. He was a drifter through schools, jobs, and

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eventually into a bleak and private world of fantasy. Before

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Joel left to attend college, he was determined to lose virginity,

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and so he picked up a woman who he would

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pay for sex. In nineteen eighty six, he moved into

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his parents' home full time and began his own landscaping

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business to make money. It gave him privacy, tools, a truck,

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but most importantly, it gave him time. For Joel Rifkin

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murder didn't begin with violence, It began with obsession. He

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was a man consumed by compulsive sexual desire what some

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experts today would probably call sex addiction. Though never officially diagnosed,

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Joel himself admitted that his life was dominated by his

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need for sex, and more specifically sex with disadvantaged women

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who he believed he could control. By the late nineteen eighties,

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he was spending nearly every night strolling Manhattan's red light districts,

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used his landscaping truck as both lure and layer. Sometimes

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he'd visit strip clubs or massage parlors, but more often

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he sought out street level sex workers. He admitted to

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sleeping with hundreds of women over the span of just

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a few years, sometimes seeing two or three in a

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single night.

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How did it make you feel to go? Because ultimately

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you kept doing this? I mean, right, you know, you

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got on and on and.

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On from an occasional you know, tension reliever, just curiosity

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to yeah, every paycheck. Right, there was a time where

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if I cashed my check on a Thursday, I had

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to get a full tank of guests that day, get

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whatever errands I had to do done before Friday, because

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by Monday it would be you got five bucks, I

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can get a tank, a guess and can get home.

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Yeah, and that's the what we know what you were doing.

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But I'm asking you why why did you go back?

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How did it make you feel to be with the prostitutes?

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Just a lot less tense, a lot less.

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Lonely, less tense to slowly? What about control? What about

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controlling the event?

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It was they were more control than I was.

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Joel wasn't necessarily seeking connection or intimacy. This wasn't necessarily

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about loneliness. It wasn't even about power, although that was

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a component. This was about compulsion. Joel Rifkin had become

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addicted to the ritual, the cruising, the negotiation, the secrecy,

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But over time that compulsion stopped giving him the high

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he craved, and he started fantasizing about more about domination,

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about violence, about death. In his confession, Rifkin described how

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the post sex moments became darker. He would become angry, resentful,

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sometimes even disgusted. It was only a matter of time

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before he started to act on those feelings.

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See you sometimes expanded. And it was also the killing

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fantasy that would come in and out.

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Okay, what is that fantasy?

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It was strangulation fantasies.

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It was, uh, okay, tell me about that. What is

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the strangulation fantasy?

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Sort of like of the movie Frenzy and things like that.

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How would one do that? What would that be like?

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And I'd run through scenarios and then dismiss it. I

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don't know. With strangulation, you seemed to be an intimacy

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to it. You know, it's contact. Yeah.

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Of course, sex addiction, when left unchecked, can spiral into

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deeply dangerous behavior, especially in someone exhibiting existing antisocial tendencies.

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Rifkin wasn't just compulsive, he was emotionally disconnected and unable

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to regulate his fantasies. Experts note how addiction doesn't exist

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in a vacuum, and for Joel it fed directly into

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his need for control. He said, the moment of strangulation,

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the moment when his victims stopped struggling, was when he

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felt the most powerful, and that's what kept.

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Him coming back.

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It wasn't about sex, it was about annihilation. There's a

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dangerous myth that sex addiction is just an excuse, but

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in Joel Rifkins's case, it's a genuine pathology, one that

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drove him night after night to search for something that

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would finally satisfy his cravings. But the need never went

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away no matter how many women he used or killed.

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Joel Rifkins's addiction wasn't a pleasure. It was to the

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illusion of control. On March fifth, nineteen eighty nine, Joel

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Rifkin picked up a sex worker named Heidi Bulk, aged

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twenty five, known by the nickname Susie.

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He drives her out to Long Island, to the home

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that he grew up in where he played with his sister,

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where he still lives with his mother. He plans on

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just having sex, although this fantasy of killing somebody is

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in his head like it always is.

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We were going back to the stroll. She wanted a

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cop again, so I took to the drug spot. Then

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I still wanted to do something with us, so we

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went out to the house. She got high in the

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bathroom again.

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He has sex with Susie. She wants to sleep, She

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wants more drugs, she wants more money. You know, she's

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not cooperating.

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You've been with her for quite a while, as you described,

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ten to eleven hours, and she essentially has really been

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much more interested in getting drugs than Yeah, getting drugs

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and sleeping, Getting drugs and sleeping.

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Yeah, to any spots around here we can get something drugs, Yeah, No,

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get back to the city for that. I don't know

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any place out here. We get ready to leave, and

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that's when I hit her.

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He brought her back to his home while his mother

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was away, and the encounter turned violent. Joel beats Susie

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to death with a souvenir artillery shell. Then he strangled her.

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He didn't panic, not right away. He slept in the

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same house with her corpse in the garage for days.

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When the smell became overwhelming, Rifkin dismembered Susie's body with

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an exact o knife. He placed the pieces into buckets

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and scattered them in different locations, Brooklyn, the East River,

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another in New Jersey.

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You know, to grab an artillery shell and hit somebody

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in the head.

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

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It just well, that's what I'm wondering.

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Is that a culmination of the whole night of just

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this constant get me drugs, you know, and in other words,

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I don't know, are your needs being met through this

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whole night or are you just sort of the gopher?

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Well it's been it was the gopher, to use that word,

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and other nights one arm was around their head, the

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other arm was underneath the arm.

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So chin neck area, So you were smothering with your forearm. Yeah.

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How did you feel after you were done killing her?

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What was that feeling like? When I woke up, I

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was like, or did it not happen?

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Wasn't I remember going down in the basement realizing, okay,

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we did do something, and I remember a poking under

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see if she was, you know, wake up?

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Did you sleep well?

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Yeah?

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Did you normally sleep well?

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Yeah?

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Fell out for about six hours. First homicide yep. Then

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what happened to her?

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Uh?

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He woke up and went down.

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Thought for several hours how to get her out of

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the house?

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What did you do with her?

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Uh? How I cut up with the idea of small packages,

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easy to hide, easy to make go away, easy to

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take out with the trash.

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What made you decide to do that? To take that route?

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It's messy, It takes a lot of time. Just that

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I had said, if.

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It, you know, make everything as small as possible, make

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it all disappear. That was the overwhelming thought I had.

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When usual for his sister or his mother to go

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anywhere near that garage, because the garage was very much

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like his room. It was all filled with his.

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Jump and then he waited for something to happen, for

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police to knock, but no one did. That's when Rifkin

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realized something chilling. No one cared he could do this again,

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and he did. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Skip the ads at patreon dot com. Slash tapes from

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the Dark Side by the Spring of nineteen ninety, Joe

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Rifkin had already killed once. The first murder had awakened

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something in him, a dark appetite he didn't fully understand,

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but could no longer suppress. He told himself it had

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been a one time mistake, that it wouldn't happen again,

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But that was a lie. Just over a year later,

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Rifkin met Julie Blackbird, and the urge returned.

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Period of time, what's going on in that eighteen months?

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Are you fantasizing?

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You think? Did you think back on Susie?

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Well, that was yeah, that whole night would just keep repeating.

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Some nights it was terrifying, other nights it was pleasant.

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It was exhilarating due moments of terror. You know, it

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just it ran its course my way to be terrifying.

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Oh.

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I was still in denial that I even did it

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at times.

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Julie Blackbird was thirty one years old, A part time

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sex worker. She'd struggled with addiction and periods of homelessness.

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She was no stranger at a hard times, but those

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who knew her said she was kind and sharp, with

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a fierce sense of humor. Eighteen months after his first

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kill on July fourteenth, nineteen ninety, Joel picked up Julie

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near the Lower East side of Manhattan under the Manhattan Bridge.

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It was a swelteringly hot Saturday night. She climbed into

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his mass to pickup truck, unaware that she was stepping

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into the final hours of her life. Joel's mother again

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was out of town, so they drove back to East

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Meadow and Julie spent the night the same pattern as

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the first kill, the same set up, the same destination.

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They went into the cluttered garage, just like before. Joel

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claimed they had sex, but afterwards something shifted. Rifkin dismembered

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Julie Blackbird, and he placed the pieces in plastic buckets

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and sealed them with cements. It was a macabre kind

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of efficiency, when investigators would later describe as chillingly organized.

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One by one, he drove the containers to various drop

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sites around New York's waterways. He tossed one into the

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East River, another one into Brooklyn's Newtown Creek, and at

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least one more into the Harlem River. It was a

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disposal plan designed not just to hide the evidence, but

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to erase Julie Blackbird entirely.

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You never concerned about getting stopped by police with all

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these body parts in your car.

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I mean it was as it was.

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Ever a no no. If they had stopped you, would

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they have seen the body parts.

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Depending on when the most of everything was in the trunk,

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there was what looked like a bucket of cement and

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a passenger side.

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Each time he got more comfortable, some victims were dumped

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in rivers. Others were buried in shallow graves or left

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in industrial areas. In one case, he kept a body

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in his garage for days before finding a place to

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dispose of it. Joel became obsessed with perfecting his process.

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He kept notes, souvenirs, He even tried to use chemicals

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to speed up decomposition. His victims had names Barbara Jacobs

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aged thirty one, Mary Ellen de Luca, aged twenty two,

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Lorraine or Viedo aged twenty eight, and many more, but

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most were never reported missing sex workers, drug users, women

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on the margins. They were easy to forget, and that's

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what Joel Rifkin counted on. Fast forward to June twenty eighth,

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nineteen ninety three. Joel was driving a rusty pickup truck

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on the Southern State Parkway. It was early morning. A

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state trooper noticed the truck didn't have a license plate,

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and then a routine traffic stop turned into a police chase.

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He did to go out east and accidentally ended up

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exiting towards the city and drove passed the trooper car,

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and then the Christmas tree let up.

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And he just opted to, you know, to take flight

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and hope for the best. I can't even imagine, knowing

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his personality that they probably wasn't even much more of

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a thought process than that. It was just sheer panic.

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We reached speeds of up to ninety miles an hour.

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At one point, he put the truck up on two wheels,

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so the driver side of the vehicle was actually lifted

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off the ground, and I thought.

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He was going to roll it over.

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It was going to be over right there.

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Eventually I crashed into a utility pole which happened to

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be rotten at the bottom, and it spiraled over the truck.

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As officers approached, they smelled something, something foul, and.

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We were trying to get the vehicle information, and that's

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when kind of noticed a strong odor coming from the vehicle.

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I had my window down and I'd say within half

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a mile of the scene, I could smell the odor

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of a dead body.

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Under the tarp was the body of Tiffany Bresciani, twenty

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two year old sex worker and aspiring actress. She had

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been missing for days. Joel Rifkin was rested on the spot,

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and just like that, the most prolific serial killer in

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New York's history was caught. Joel confessed almost immediately. Over

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the next few days, he led investigators on a gruesome tour,

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pointing out out where he had dumped bodies, where he

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picked up victims, and how he killed them. He remembered

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every detail, every name, every location.

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Almost unbelievable, very factual, off the top of his head,

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with no hesitation. He willed down that list and made

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his nose and sat there, just like he was studying

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a writing memoir.

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Police were stunned by his calm demeanor. One detective later

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said it was like talking to an accountant reviewing old receipts.

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In nineteen ninety four, Joel Rifkin was convicted of multiple

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counts of murder. He received two hundred and three years

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to life in prison, and he'll die behind bars. Joel

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Rifkin's story is one of horror. But more than that,

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it's a story of neglect. The system that didn't notice

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him growing up, and it didn't notice his victims as

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they disappeared. The lives he took weren't less valuable, but

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they were treated that way. Today, Joel resides in a

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cell in Clinton Correctional Facility, alone, in isolation. He spends

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twenty three hours in those brick walls, reading and gardening, yes, gardening,

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as if trying to cultivate something beautiful from the rot

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of his life. But no flowers will bloom in the

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soil he's left behind. Thank you to everyone who supports

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us on Patreon. This month, we're covering Peter Keller, The

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00:18:39.359 --> 00:18:44.319
Truman Show Killer, exclusively on Patreon. I'm really excited for

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this episode. So if you want access to that, plus

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like over a dozen other Night Terror episodes, plus a

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bunch of after shows that we've recorded, and you also

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get early releases to the main episodes, and you get

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Thank you to everyone who supports us. Our newest members

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are nanbo, Katie d Donkey and Erica McKenna I, Megan Morgan,

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Thank you to Alison Barkley who supports us at thirty

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of one coffee a month. Patreon dot com slash Tapes

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from the dark Side. Thank you to Augusta Trebororum and

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to twenty six hundred for allowing us to adapt one

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00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:33.640
of his songs for our main theme. The footage that

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you heard in today's episode was from the TV show

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Criminal Mindscape. They did an episode on Joel Rifkin in

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00:20:41.119 --> 00:20:44.480
twenty ten, and there will be a link to that

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IMDb page in the show notes. Until next time, try

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to enjoy the daylight

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A dark side, Yes, Scar,