The Making of a Monster: Did Joel Rifkin’s Childhood Create a Killer?
Warning: The following contains disturbing accounts of violence, including sexual violence. Reader discretion is advised.
On a quiet night in 1989, inside his family home in Long Island, Joel Rifkin’s darkest impulses took hold for the first time. Using a discarded artillery shell he had picked up at a flea market, the 24-year-old bludgeoned a woman he knew only as “Susie” after having sex with her. When she attempted to get up, he strangled her to death, carried her lifeless body to the basement, and dismembered her with a knife.
It was a gruesome, emotionless act—the first of many.
Over the next six years, Rifkin would claim the lives of 16 more women, brutally murdering them and discarding their bodies across New York and New Jersey. He was calculated, remorseless, and virtually invisible, lurking in the shadows as he preyed on vulnerable victims. But was Rifkin born a killer? Or was he shaped by a childhood of isolation, bullying, and rejection?
The Outsider: Rifkin’s Troubled Early Years
Born on January 20, 1959, Rifkin was adopted as an infant by Bernard and Jeanne Rifkin, a middle-class Long Island couple. From an early age, it was clear he didn’t fit in. His struggles in school—caused by undiagnosed dyslexia and poor coordination—made him an easy target for relentless bullying. Classmates tormented him, ridiculing him for his awkwardness and learning difficulties.
The abuse was relentless. Rifkin was frequently ambushed in hallways, shoved into lockers, and subjected to humiliating pranks. In high school, desperate to belong, he joined the track team, hoping to find camaraderie. Instead, his teammates turned against him, dunking his head in a toilet, stuffing a dead chicken into his mouth, and destroying his belongings.
There was one moment of rejection that seemed to wound him deeper than any physical attack. Rifkin had believed he had finally found acceptance while taking photos for the school yearbook. But when the senior editors threw a celebratory party, he wasn’t invited.
“He was visibly shaken when he talked about that,” said Robert Mladinich, a former NYPD detective who later interviewed Rifkin in prison. “That moment hurt him more than anything.”
Seeds of Darkness: Fantasy Turns to Reality
As a teenager, Rifkin retreated into violent fantasies. His mind fixated on revenge, fueled by a deep-seated resentment toward those who had tormented him. He imagined overpowering and controlling women—the very people he felt had mocked and rejected him.
Despite his father’s best efforts, Rifkin floundered academically and athletically, only deepening his feelings of failure. His mother was his only source of comfort. They bonded over photography and gardening, two of the few joys in his otherwise lonely world.
“For a serial killer, Rifkin’s upbringing wasn’t as traumatic as one might expect,” said forensic expert Mark Safarik, a retired FBI profiler. “But the constant rejection, the bullying—it pushed him inward. It helped create the darkness inside him.”
The Killing Begins: A Monstrous Evolution
Years after dropping out of college, Rifkin was a 34-year-old unemployed landscaper still living with his mother and sister when his killing spree came to a sudden and unexpected end.
On June 28, 1993, police attempted to pull him over for driving without a license plate. Rifkin panicked, leading officers on a high-speed chase before crashing into a pole. As police approached the vehicle, a sickening discovery awaited them—a decomposing body wrapped in a blue tarp in the back of his truck.
The victim was later identified as 22-year-old Tiffany Bresciani, a sex worker from Manhattan.
During his arrest, Rifkin confessed in chilling detail to 17 murders. Some of his victims had been dismembered. Others were simply discarded, left to rot in remote locations. His first victim, the woman known as “Susie,” was later identified as Heidi Balch after her skull was discovered on a golf course in 1989—her identity only confirmed through DNA testing in 2013.
Conviction and a Life Behind Bars
Rifkin’s trial was swift. On June 9, 1994, he was sentenced to 25 years to life for Bresciani’s murder, with an additional 203 years tacked on for his other crimes. A 2002 appeal was denied, ensuring he would remain locked away in Clinton Correctional Facility for the rest of his life.
Despite his cooperation with authorities, Rifkin never truly explained why he killed. During a 2015 interview with Safarik, the former FBI profiler pressed him for answers.
“For whatever reason, some women survived multiple encounters with him, and others didn’t,” Safarik said. “I asked him what made him choose his victims.”
Rifkin’s response was chilling. He admitted that some women didn’t ‘please’ him or had ridiculed him in some way. Those women, he decided, wouldn’t live.
“He had no real self-awareness about it,” Safarik recalled. “There was just this blank stare. He couldn’t explain why he felt the way he did.”
Nature vs. Nurture: The Unanswered Question
Did Rifkin’s troubled childhood create the monster he became? Or was he always destined to kill? Experts remain divided. While childhood trauma and bullying played a role, there is no definitive answer to what made Joel Rifkin transform from a lonely misfit into one of New York’s most notorious serial killers.
What is clear, however, is that his darkness festered in silence, growing unchecked until it finally exploded in bloodshed.
And by the time the world realized who Joel Rifkin really was, it was far too late.
