From Bullied Outcast to Cold-Blooded Killer: The Dark Descent of Joel Rifkin
In 1989, behind the closed doors of his Long Island family home, Joel Rifkin’s sinister urges erupted for the first time. Armed with a diffused artillery shell he had picked up at a flea market, the then-24-year-old brutally bludgeoned a sex worker he knew as “Susie” after sleeping with her.
Rifkin didn’t stop there. He smashed her head more than two dozen times, recalls former NYPD detective and author Robert Mladinich. When Susie, bloodied and barely conscious, attempted to move, he strangled her to death, carried her body to the basement, and methodically dismembered her with a knife.
Decades later, during a chilling prison interview, Rifkin recounted the murder with unnerving indifference. “[He] was very dispassionate,” Mladinich told A&E True Crime. “Just matter of fact.”
This was only the beginning. Over the next six years, Rifkin claimed the lives of 16 more women, disposing of their bodies across New York and New Jersey.
By the time his rampage ended in 1993, Rifkin had earned a macabre nickname—”Joel the Ripper.” With 17 confirmed victims, he became one of New York’s most notorious serial killers. But what transformed this quiet, socially awkward boy into a monster?
The Torment That Shaped a Killer
Joel Rifkin’s story began on January 20, 1959, when he was born to two unwed college students who put him up for adoption. At just three weeks old, he was taken in by Bernard and Jeanne Rifkin, a middle-class couple in East Meadow, Long Island. Three years later, they adopted a daughter, Jan, completing what seemed like a picture-perfect family.
But from the moment he stepped into kindergarten, Rifkin was an outsider. He struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, making him an easy target for bullies. Classmates ridiculed him relentlessly, pushing him into isolation.
As a child, he devised survival tactics—lining up last to avoid bullies, showing up late to class, and lingering in the hallways until everyone else had left for the day. But no matter how much he tried to blend in, the torment never stopped.
Desperate to escape his loner status, Rifkin joined his high school’s track team. But instead of acceptance, he faced even crueler treatment—his teammates stuffed a dead chicken in his mouth, filled his gym bag with eggs and shaving cream, and even dunked his head in a toilet.
His one solace was photography. As a member of the yearbook club, he thought he had finally found his place—until the senior girls running the club deliberately excluded him from the wrap-up party. That rejection cut deeper than any bullying. “[He] visibly winced when he spoke about that incident,” Mladinich recalled. It was one of the few times his mother ever saw him truly shattered.
Even at home, Rifkin struggled to meet expectations. His father, a brilliant structural engineer, couldn’t hide his disappointment in his son’s academic failures and physical clumsiness. Though patient, Bernard Rifkin’s exasperation deepened his son’s feelings of inadequacy. The only person who ever made him feel seen was his mother, with whom he shared a love for photography and gardening.
According to forensic expert and retired FBI profiler Mark Safarik, childhood trauma often plays a role in the making of a serial killer. “With these types of offenders, they experience some kind of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse,” Safarik explained. In Rifkin’s case, years of relentless bullying likely planted the seeds of violence.
“He turned inward,” Safarik said. “And he started fantasizing.”
The Murders and the Moment He Was Caught
After dropping out of college, Rifkin’s life spiraled into stagnation. He was unemployed, living with his mother and sister, and drifting aimlessly—until he found a dark purpose.
His gruesome killing spree ended on June 28, 1993, when he made a simple mistake: driving without a license plate. When police attempted to pull him over, Rifkin panicked and led them on a high-speed chase, crashing into a pole. What they found in his truck’s bed was something out of a nightmare—a woman’s decomposing body wrapped in a blue tarp.
That same night, Rifkin confessed to murdering 17 women, providing horrifying details of how he dismembered their bodies and dumped them like discarded trash. His final victim, the one in the truck, was identified as 22-year-old Tiffany Bresciani.
Of the 17 victims, 15 were eventually identified—including Susie, whose real name was Heidi Balch. Her skull had been found on a golf course in 1989 but wasn’t identified until 2013 through DNA testing.
The Trial and a Chilling Lack of Remorse
On June 9, 1994, Joel Rifkin was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder of Bresciani. Over multiple trials, he was convicted of nine murders in total and sentenced to a staggering 203 years in prison. In 2002, his final appeal was denied, ensuring that he would never walk free again.
Currently, Rifkin is serving his sentence at Clinton Correctional Facility in New York. But his crimes continue to haunt those who have studied his case.
When Safarik interviewed Rifkin in 2015, he pressed him on what determined whether a woman would live or die. The serial killer’s response was as unsettling as it was revealing: “Some couldn’t satisfy him. Some displeased him. A few mocked him.”
And that was enough for him to make his choice.
“What struck me most was his blank stare,” Safarik said. “He had no real explanation—no remorse, no understanding. Just emptiness.”
For the bullied child who once lived in the shadows, murder became his final, twisted act of revenge against a world that had cast him aside.
