Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer

- I heard joel rifkin's name on the radio.

- A 34-year-old new york man will be in court this morning.

Joel rifkin has told police he's a serial killer.

- I remember gasping that that was my college friend.

He looked so harmless. I had to have answers.

- There were plenty of kids in the hall who were scary,

But joel was not.

- I was trying to figure out how the joel that I knew

Became a deadly killer.

- He's riding around all night looking for girls,

And then he's butchering the bodies next door?

And no one knew.

- So he was invisible, certainly, to law enforcement.

- As a youngster, he'd be accosted, assaulted.

- Where does that go psychologically?

- I never got to say goodbye to my friend

Or to even understand what happened to her.

- He felt no guilt, no remorse, no pain.

He was a monster.

- New york city in the late '80s and the early '90s,

Crime was rampant.

- Policeman was shot dead in his patrol car.

- There were more than 2,000 murders a year.

- This has reached epidemic proportions.

- It is a crack epidemic which police say is causing

An increase in murder and other violent crime.

Parents--they were terrified

To have their children move there.

Back then, I was a police officer,

And it was frightening for me, so I can't even imagine

What it must have been like for the populace back then.

It was a quiet night.

There was really no one on the road.

It was approximately 3:15 in the morning.

We observed a pickup truck in the center lane.

As we got closer, we realized there was no license plate.

We turned on the lights to initiate a car stop.

The pickup truck did not pull over.

We pulled up alongside of him.

He just kind of slowly looked over,

Just had a very blank look on his face.

Possibly he was intoxicated,

So I pointed to him to pull over to the side of the road.

We thought he was pulling up onto the shoulder,

At which time, he exited the southern state parkway.

He just wasn't stopping, and at that point,

I called in that we were in pursuit.

He was getting faster and faster,

Up to 90 miles an hour.

We started getting into tighter, windier roads.

We stayed right behind him.

There's clearly something he's hiding.

He was debating which way to turn.

At the last minute, he decided to go left.

He drove up onto the sidewalk and struck a light pole...

Knocking down the pole, and the pursuit was over.

I approached white male subject

With his hands up.

I opened the door,

Grabbed him out, and put the cuffs on him.

I asked him his name, his address, date of birth.

He said his name was joel rifkin,

And that's when I noticed the smell.

As we looked into the back of the truck,

There was a blue tarp.

The decision was made to pull back the tarp,

And we could see the head and shoulder of a female

Deceased for several days.

- That was the first time joel rifkin raised

To the level of anyone's attention.

He wasn't on our radar. Prior to this,

He was invisible, certainly to law enforcement.

My job at the scene is to take control

And supervise the investigation.

I directed that they take him back

To the state police headquarters in farmingdale.

Our goal was to lock him in to the victim we had,

And rifkin was cooperative.

He couldn't deny that he had the body in the vehicle.

And that's when they started to ask--

- "well, has this ever happened before?"

And joel rifkin answered, "well, what if it did?"

- Is it more than 10, less than 20?

He kind of leaned back in the chair and said,

"one or 100, what's the difference?"

I knew what serial murderers were.

I certainly never thought I was gonna meet one.

- This is just getting crazier and crazier.

What is going on here? Who is joel rifkin?

- Two troopers on uniformed night patrol

Stopped a pickup truck

That contained the body of a female victim.

- I was driving out to long island

When I heard joel rifkin's name on the radio.

- There was an arrest of joel rifkin.

I remembered gasping.

I immediately realized that that was my college friend.

We were both journalism students

At the state university of new york at brockport.

I had received my very first paid assignment

For a boxing magazine featuring a local fighter.

The journalism department recommended joel rifkin

As the wonder kid of the photography department.

We drove the 30 miles or so to the fight.

I remember thinking, "you know,

This guy is really unique. He's really cool."

There were a lot of commonalities.

We were both long island kids.

This assignment for the boxing match

Was on a Friday night.

Joel wound up getting some phenomenal shots.

We saw each other a couple of times after that,

But the semester was soon over.

When I went back for the spring semester,

I had hoped to see him.

I asked around.

I found out that joel dropped out.

When I heard about his arrest, I was dismayed

Because that differed so much from the joel that I knew.

This guy had so much potential.

I had just assumed that he was out there conquering the world

While I was just a cop.

I had lots of questions.

I wanted to know everything there was to know.

I fired off a letter to joel at attica prison,

And I said, "I was taken aback by what you did.

I'd love to learn more about your motivations."

I was curious

If he had that secret life when I knew him,

How long he'd been conducting that secret life.

How did it all go wrong?

Did it go wrong before I even met him?

When joel rifkin responded to me,

He told me that he remembered me.

We had some pretty friendly letters,

And then 7 years after he was arrested,

I went up to see him.

- He was very kind of disarmingly friendly,

Very open, honest and candid.

What drove a guy that I once considered a friend to murder?

And how could joel have gotten away with this for so long?

Anything I asked him, nothing was off limits.

- As a cop, sometimes you can sense

That people are relishing

Telling you about their antics,

But joel was so unemotional about this

And so matter of fact.

There was this complete disconnect from reality.

- I spoke to my college friend joel rifkin

At attica prison in 1999

Because I just couldn't reconcile the fact

That the joel rifkin I knew became this invisible killer.

When joel talked about his childhood,

I expected him to get a little more emotional,

But he was pretty much matter of fact.

What I found most interesting was, unlike most people

That have a desire to harm others,

There was no bed-wetting.

There was no purposeful harm of animals.

There was no fire-starting.

So he really is unique.

His behaviors did not reflect any of the normal patterns

Of such a nefarious criminal.

He talked about him and his sister being adopted

From a jewish agency in new york,

And I remember him saying, you know,

Sort of self-deprecatingly

That the dream came true for his parents

When they adopted a boy and a girl.

- Joel's family settled in east meadow, long island.

- It was joel and his sister, and his parents, ben and jean.

East meadow was

A quintessential middle class place to grow up.

- It wasn't just looked upon as a middle class home.

It was looked upon

As the future of which dreams were made.

It was their piece of the american pie.

- They were our neighbors. We were in the same class.

I used to walk to school with him.

- Joel was just a regular kid who was extra quiet,

Really polite, nice, sweet,

The kind of guy who's in his own world,

Doing his own thing.

Joel came to my bar mitzvah,

But at the same time, he's different.

He didn't really fit with anyone.

- For joel, living in east meadow,

What he perceived to be his inferiorities

Took center stage.

It was not a blissful existence for him.

- While we might have been throwing the ball,

He was looking at the sidewalk

With a magnifying glass at a bug or something.

I do remember joel being called turtle.

He had always seemed like he was kind of a little slower

And a step behind.

It became readily apparent

That he couldn't play sports.