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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Episode 229. I am your humble host, Thomas Rosland Weyberg Toon.
And tonight we continue where we left off two weeks ago, with Joel finally shedding his mask of the pathetic nerd and the hungry beast beneath blinked at daylight. Enjoy. This episode, like all other sagas told by me, would not be possible without my loyal Patreones. They are...
lisbeth russell lisa kathy james cody kylie robert val marilyn craig emily the duggletons jonathan jennifer lunivar roy cheryl richard brad laurie manuel haley james jeff aeulin meg crystal ricky and nicole
You are truly the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. Thank you.
I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise.
And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now. Joel Rifkin had a dark secret, a twisted fascination with prostitutes, that began festering in his mind back in 1972.
A seed planted, perhaps, by Alfred Hitchcock's film Frenzy, a chilling tale of a strangler targeting women of the night. Conveniently, around the same time, his parents gifted him a car, a steel chariot for his nocturnal pursuits. Rifkin trolled the streets, a predator in the shadows, seeking solace and release with paid companionship.
His college years became a blur of skipped classes and fleeting encounters, the allure of the streets a siren song stronger than any lecture. The same pattern plagued his work life, absences piling up, replaced by stolen moments with anonymous women. His meager earnings dwindled, swallowed by a growing addiction. But the world's oldest profession offered its own dangers.
Rivkin, a patsy in more ways than one, found himself robbed twice by the same cunning woman. Her sob story, a well-rehearsed act, the sting of humiliation, only deepened his isolation. Then came the ultimate blow. August, 1987. A wrong turn. A miscalculation. The woman he approached wasn't selling companionship.
She was selling justice. An undercover cop. An arrest. A fine. Shame burned in his cheeks. But there was a silver lining. His secret remained safe from his mother's prying eyes. Manhattan beckoned. A new hunting ground further from the watchful gaze of his family.
Rifkin, a man adrift, found himself drawn to another morbid fascination: serial killers, particularly those with a penchant for prostitutes. Arthur Shawcross, the Green River Killer, names such as those became a macabre litany. He claimed it was research, a detached study, much in the same vein as your humble host.
But a different truth lurked beneath the surface. He, Rifkin, was learning, preparing.
The loneliness that had been his constant companion since childhood had driven him inward, building a dark world within. For years, his mind had been a battleground, violent fantasies of rape and murder swirling in the shadows. He craved the touch of a woman, but the dark impulse to silence them grew stronger with each passing encounter. Every stolen moment with a prostitute
fueled the fire within. The years of abuse and neglect had taken their toll, twisting his psyche into a warped reflection of himself. He was a pressure cooker, simmering with rage and violence, a ticking time bomb, fighting a daily battle against his urges. By March 1989, the dam had broken.
The fantasies would not subside. He needed an outlet, a way to silence the demons. His mother's absence, a fortuitous twist of fate, presented the perfect opportunity. He had a plan. He just needed a victim. The hunt was on. In the first week of March 1989, Rivkin had made the decision to kill a prostitute.
He had been dreaming of it for so long, and for some reason he decided it was time. After his mother left for her trip, he picked up a young woman called Susie in Manhattan's East Village. According to Rifkin, Susie was a serious drug addict, and they made a few stops to purchase drugs on the way back to his house. He paid her, and they had sex, but Rifkin was not very satisfied with her performance.
Then, as Rifkin sat simmering in his disappointment and rage, Susie asked if they could go back out and get more drugs. At this point, Rifkin picked up a howitzer shell, a very heavy full-metal jacket artillery ammunition that his parents kept as a souvenir, and struck her with it multiple times. He only stopped when he became too tired to continue.
Surprisingly, Susie was not dead, and when Rifkin tried to shift her, she bit him on the finger rather deeply. Susie was in extreme pain and was bleeding profusely, but she was a fierce woman who wanted to live. But even though Rifkin was no jock, small Susie, who was emaciated from lengthy drug use, posed no real threat.
He sat on top of her, pinning her arms under his legs, wrapped his hands around her neck, and squeezed as hard as he could. Her trachea broke, and Susie drowned in her own blood, as well as from strangulation. Rifkin managed to get her body into a trash bag, and went about cleaning the living room of blood and chaos. He then lay down for several hours to rest, when Rifkin woke
He dragged Susie to the basement of the house and laid her body across the washer and dryer, using a craft knife, a knife almost as sharp as a scalpel. He dismembered the body and used pliers to remove her teeth so she could not be identified. He also cut off her fingertips so no prints remained with which to identify her.
Rivkin shoved Susie's dismembered head into an empty paint can and put the rest of her body parts into trash bags before loading it all into his mother's car. He drove to New Jersey and dumped the legs and head in Woodland near Hopewell, and as he returned to Manhattan, he tossed the rest of the body parts into the East River.
He had not been as clever as he thought, however, and it was only a few days before Susie's head was discovered. A gentleman playing golf at the Hopewell Valley Golf Club made the shocking discovery on the 5th of March after searching the woods for a wayward golf ball. Despite her head being found, police were unable to identify her at the time, but they were able to determine that she was HIV-positive,
And when the news was broadcast, Rivkin had a major panic attack due to the possibility he may have been infected. He felt absolutely no remorse for savagely murdering a young woman, as always. His only concern was himself.
Not only did he feel no remorse, he had thoroughly enjoyed murdering Susie. He had never felt so strong, so powerful, so in control. He loved it and wanted more. Over a year passed before the predator struck again. It was late 1990, or so investigators believe. This time, his prey bore a superficial resemblance to pop icon Madonna.
Julie Blackbird, another victim from the city's underbelly, found herself in the killer's sinister crosshairs. With his mother conveniently out of town, Rifkin lured Blackbird to his family home, a stage set for horror. The following morning, a brutal scene unfolded. Armed with a heavy wooden tabled leg, Rifkin unleashed a savage attack, finally silencing her with his bare hands.
As he stood over the bloody, mangled corpse, he contemplated necrophilia. According to Rifkin himself, after his arrest, he claimed he chose not to rape Julie's corpse. Here, I would like to remind my dear listeners of the one trait that connects all serial killers. They lie. A lot.
And although several serial killers are happy, eager even, to talk freely about their crimes, they always try to paint their crimes according to their own self-image. A good example is how Ted Bundy confessed to raping and killing young women, but he refused to fess up to being a pedophile, even though he raped, tortured and killed a 12-year-old girl.
Rifkin probably had grandiose thoughts about what he was doing. Perhaps even a twisted moral, where he, in the same way as Gary Ridgway, felt prostitutes deserved to die. So, when his actual reasons for killing women shone through, pure sexual deviancy, he claimed he never raped a corpse, only thought about it.
I have serious doubts about the veracity of this claim. When he was finished with raping and murdering Julie, he, Rifkin, embarked on a macabre mission in order to avoid justice. A trip to the hardware store provided the tools for his gruesome task. A mortar pan and cement. Echoing the disposal of his first victim, he dismembered Blackbird's body.
encasing her limbs and head in concrete-filled buckets. Her torso was similarly concealed within a milk crate. The killer then methodically disposed of the remains, the torso and head vanishing into the murky depths of the East River, while the other body parts were dumped in a Brooklyn barge canal. Despite the killer's meticulous efforts, one crucial piece of evidence survived—
Julie Blackbird's personal diary, discovered among Rifkin's possessions, offered a haunting glimpse into the life of a woman cut down in her prime. Her body may never have been found, but her story, told through the monster who entered her life after his arrest, would forever haunt the city.
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This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow. Let's face it, we were all that kid.
So, first, call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee with your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 in order, additional terms apply. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids...
i know first-hand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care but it's good to have some things that are non negotiable for some that could be a night out with the boys chugging beers and having a laugh for others it might be an eating night
For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.
If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Everyone needs someone to talk to, even psychopaths, even your humble host. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.
Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Rifkin picked up 31-year-old Barbara on the evening on the 13th of July, 1991. She was working as a prostitute.
Barbara was a drug addict and had been arrested previously on charges of prostitution and car theft. On returning to Rifkin's home, they had sexual intercourse, and Barbara fell asleep. Seizing the opportunity, Rifkin picked up a table leg, the same he had used to bludgeon Julie Blackbird, and struck her in the head with it. He then proceeded to strangle her with his bare hands until she was dead.
Rivkin was not keen on dismembering another body, as he found the task repulsive, so he developed another method for disposing of Barbara's body. He wrapped her up in plastic, and then stowed her in a large cardboard box, folding her body up so she would fit.
After putting the box into the back of his mother's pickup truck, Rifkin drove to the Hudson River and dropped the box into the water before driving back home. This was not as successful as his previous methods, however, as Barbara's remains were found just hours later.
A group of firefighters happened to be on a training exercise in that area and located the box with Barbara's body inside near a cement plant. Mary Ellen DeLuca was a ghost haunting the neon-lit graveyard of New York City. Twenty-two and strung out to the gills, she traded flesh for the white devil's powder.
It was a cold September night when she climbed into Rifkin's car, a desperate gamble for another hit. What started as a simple score stretched into a hellish odyssey through the city's underbelly. By the time dawn was gnawing at the edges of the world, they were holed up in a motel that smelled of despair and stale cigarettes.
She was a ravenous animal, demanding more of the white stuff, her eyes twin black holes in a face etched with need. He was running on empty, his wallet as thin as his patience. When it came time to pay the piper, she was a fuzzy customer, her complaints like nails on a chalkboard. In a moment of madness he asked her if she wanted to die. The words hung in the air, cold and heavy.
But she just looked at him, those dead eyes, and said, and I quote, Yeah, okay. It happened fast, too fast. One minute she was breathing, the next she was just there, a doll, with the life squeezed out of it. And now, with the first light of day creeping in, he had a body problem, a big one.
No basement to hide her in, no woods to bury her, just a motel room, a world away from home, and a gnawing sense of panic. A movie he had seen once, some old flick popped into his head. A steamer trunk. That was the solution. He managed to force Mary Ellen's stiff corpse into the trunk.
Then he drove to Orange County, pulled into a rest stop just outside of Cornwall, and left the trunk there. He made no attempt to cover or camouflage the trunk at all, obviously not concerned about it being found quickly. Remarkably, the trunk with Mary's body contained inside was not found until a month later, on the 1st of October. There was no ID in the trunk,
and she was naked except for her bra. By now the body had decomposed quite dramatically, and the coroner was unable to determine how she had died. Like Barbara Jacobs, Mary was also buried as a Jane Doe, and was not identified until June 1993. Rifkin was always ravenous, not for food, but for deviant sex, violence, and death.
Wandering the neon-lit graveyards of the city, he was always on the prow. But it did not always end in murder. Sometimes the beast inside him slumbered. There were women he took in, used, and then let go, unharmed. But his deep desire for the total domination and control murder gave him was a fickle thing, and it would always return.
Young Lee was a prostitute, and unlike all the previous victims, she knew Rifkin. He had bought her services a couple of times before, and she knew something was not quite right about him. But even the wise can stumble into darkness. This time, the beast was wide awake. Something was off, a kink in the gears of desire. Maybe it was the other woman, the specter of her still lingering in the air.
Whatever it was, his mask of sanity dropped completely as soon as they were in a room together. He took his time with killing her, slowly using a rope to strangle her. And in those final terrifying moments, she told him he was making a big mistake. A flicker of something, maybe regret, maybe fear, passed through him.
but it was gone as quickly as it came swallowed by the darkness his next plan of action was to dispose of her body using a similar steamer trunk as the one he had used to get rid of mary's body he managed to fit yun li's body into it and then disposed of it in the east river
Her remains were discovered on the 23rd of September, several days before Mary Ellen DeLuca's body was found, even though the latter had been murdered long before Yon. This time, Yon Lee was identified by her ex-husband, so she was able to be buried under her name, instead of as a Jane Doe.
Just before Christmas Day in 1991, Rifkin picked up a prostitute on West 46th Street, Manhattan, but unfortunately he never bothered to get her name, and she was never found. While she was performing oral sex on him in his vehicle, he strangled her, and according to Rifkin later, she died a quick death.
It is important to remember that the only way strangulation is quick is if the neck breaks, as it most certainly can if the killer applies force to the neck in such a way that it can snap. Otherwise, strangulation is never quick, and always painful. Leaving her body in the passenger's seat, he drove her to his workplace and hid the body under a tarpaulin.
Rivkin then drove to Westbury, to a recycling plant he once worked at, and picked up a 55-gallon drum that had once been used to hold oil. He went back to where the body was hidden and placed her into the drum.
His next stop was an area of junkyards in the South Bronx, and he rolled the drum into the East River, thinking it would remain unnoticed amid all the other junk piled around. Remarkably, as he was about to leave the scene, he was stopped by police, who accused him of dumping rubbish illegally. He managed to convince them that he had been collecting junk rather than dumping it,
And they warned him and let him go. Rivkin found the drum had worked so well that he decided to use them for future victims. He purchased several more of the drums, an indication that he not only did not regret his actions, but planned to kill again and again and again.
28-year-old Lorraine Orvieto suffered from manic depression, and instead of taking medication, she used cocaine to try and control her mood swings. Her use of the drug was costly, and she had been working as a prostitute to make the money she needed to fund her habit.
Rifkin was driving around in Bay Shore, Long Island, on the 26th of December, 1991, when he came across Lorraine and propositioned her. She agreed to go with him, and they drove to a nearby school. Rifkin parked his vehicle next to a fence by the school, and Lorraine began performing oral sex on him.
Rivkin proceeded to strangle her to death, and upon inspection of the contents in her purse after her demise, he discovered she was HIV positive. He decided to keep her ACT medicine, a drug used at the time to treat HIV, as well as her jewelry and her ID, as trophies of the murder.
He drove back to his landscaping workplace and stuffed Lorraine's body into one of the oil drums. Then he drove to Brooklyn and dropped the drum into Coney Island Creek. It was found on the 11th of July 1992 by a fisherman, and at that point her own family had not even filed a missing persons report.
It was another two months before anybody bothered to report that she was missing. Rifkin's need to kill was escalating, as is very typical among psychopathic serial killers, and the time between murders was getting shorter. Just a week after killing Lorraine Orvieto, he was out hunting for his next victim.
Unfortunately for Mary Ann Holloman, she crossed his path on the 2nd of January 1992. Mary, aged 39, was a drug-addicted prostitute who did a bit of sewing for the local strippers as a sideline income source. She would be Rifkin's oldest victim. After Rifkin picked up Mary, he took her to the same parking lot where he had taken Yun Lee the night he killed her.
While Mary was performing oral sex on Rifkin, he strangled her to death. During his confessions later on, he could not recall any remarkable memories or thoughts about this murder. Since the kill was almost identical to that of Jan, we can assume he tried to snap her neck as well. He drove her body back to Long Island and shoved it into an oil drum before dumping it in the Coney Island creek.
The drum containing Mary's body was found on the 9th of July, 1992, following a report from an anonymous caller. It is doubtful the call was made by Rifkin. Probably it was some passer-by, perhaps doing something he or her should not be doing, who called the Discovery Inn anonymously to avoid being tangled up with the law.
Mary was identified by dental records, and her body was taken by her family to be buried. Although the next victim is considered to be Rifkin's ninth victim, this unidentified woman was found before the previous two victims. Rifkin, after his arrest, was unable to summon up a great deal about this victim, and had no idea what her name had been.
all he was able to remember was that he had picked her up in manhattan and that she had tattoos also that she had fought hard for her life when he strangled her this victim was placed into rifkin's last oil drum and dropped into newtown creek in brooklyn
On the 13th of May 1992, the drum was discovered floating with the current, and on closer inspection, a foot could be seen protruding through the rusty metal of the drum. Toxicology tests performed subsequent to the autopsy identified a large quantity of cocaine in her system,
which resulted in detectives mistakenly assuming she had been a drug mule who had accidentally died after a drug-filled condom had ruptured. It would take until Rifkin's arrest and detailed confession for police to realize how very wrong they had been.
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Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com And with that, we come to the end of part two in the saga of Joel the Ripper Rifkin. Next episode, I will bring to you part three. So as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.
