Through the Eyes of Serial Killers by Nadia Fezzani

Author:Nadia Fezzani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2015-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

NF: And then you decapitated her with an X-Acto knife?

JR: Yeah, it’s just like a scalpel. It’s easy to get into joints and then you can pop bones from the socket. It’s very mechanical and very gross.

NAME: Joel David Rifkin

NICKNAME: Joel the Ripper

DATE OF BIRTH: January 20, 1959

MARITAL STATUS: Single

TIME SPAN OF MURDERS: 1989–1993

NUMBER OF MURDERS: Seventeen

CURRENT STATUS: Incarcerated in New York State since 1993

I didn’t really believe that Joel Rifkin would respond to my letter requesting a face-to-face interview, as I hadn’t seen a recent interview with him and I knew he was in demand. But he did, and quickly. In fact, he opened up to me from the first time he wrote back.

Joel Rifkin is one of the most notorious serial killers in the United States. I will never forget the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine is dating a man named Joel Rifkin. In a scene that takes place during a football game, her date is called to the microphone, and the crowd goes into a state of panic.

Joel Rifkin murdered seventeen prostitutes in New York City between 1989 and 1993. When he was in his early thirties, he dismembered his first victim. He also killed prostitutes at his mother’s. He transported them in a wheelbarrow and hid them in a box or in a barrel. The body of one woman stayed in the house for four days. Rifkin was arrested while he was driving his pickup truck without a licence plate, with a corpse inside. The chase ended when he deliberately drove into a lamppost; he knew he was caught and didn’t want to be taken alive.

With hope for a happy life, Joel Rifkin’s parents adopted him when he was three weeks old, on Valentine’s Day. They also adopted a little girl three years later.

But young Rifkin’s life didn’t go as planned.

Most of his neighbours seemed to hate him. He harboured a knot of pain inside his gangly frame. He had an inferiority complex. People laughed at him constantly. His days were filled with sadness and discontent. He dreamed of having friends and success in life. He desperately wanted to be liked, but most people rejected him. He wanted to play sports in school, but the other kids didn’t want him on their team. They even threw eggs at him. He had a broken heart; he was ashamed. He asked himself, “Why?” At school, they laughed at his posture, mocked his glasses, his too-short pants, his hairstyle. He was called the Turtle. He was trying to walk faster, but in vain. This was his daily life.

Once, while he was going to the bathroom at school, some boys attacked him and took his clothes off by force. They made him kneel, gripped him by the hair, and forced his head into the toilet bowl. Once the attackers let him go, Rifkin invited them to drink beer and watch a game at his house. The boys just dispersed, insulting him all the while.

His father, a former varsity athlete who sat on the school board, was ashamed of him because he wasn’t good in sports or math.

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