Further reading for Joel Rifkin
From the Mouth of the Monster: The Joel Rifkin Story by Robert Mladinich
Joe Rifkin is a serial killer who is currently serving a life sentence at Clinton Correctional Facility for the murder of 9 sex workers around New York City and Long Island. Between 1989 and 1993 it is believed that he picked up, murdered and dismembered 17 sex workers.
Rifkin exists in the history of American serial killers as a bit of an anomaly. Where most killers come from traumatic backgrounds or suffer a traumatic head wound, Rifkin’s background has none of these qualities. He was raised in an upper-middle class family and seemed to come from a fairly ordinary family life. He did suffer from a learning disability and wasn’t terribly popular with classmates, but his life was otherwise uneventful. It’s unclear what drove him to murder these women.
Rifkin was particularly prolific, however, and his spree was allowed to go on for as long as it did as his victims were all sex workers who fall into the unfortunate bucket of “less dead” victims. With few of them even reported missing, Rifkin was able to move around Long Island completely undetected and once arrested couldn’t shut up about his crimes, like Ed Kemper. Kemper, at the very least, was an insightful and engaging character to listen to. Rifkin, not so much. His lasting legacy is, appropriately, a joke as he shared a name with a Seinfeld character in an episode of the show where Elaine tries to get him to change his name. She recommends that he change it to OJ, since everyone likes him. Several months later, OJ was arrested.
Episodes: 498-499
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