Chapter 15

EVERY day, investigators gathered at the command center in a large conference room at state police headquarters in East Farmingdale. On the walls were maps of the region, as well as a list of the victims. Bits of evidence—jewelry, credit cards, clothing—lay strewn on tables.

The detectives’ job was prodigious. Complicating matters was the fact that there were many different jurisdictions and law enforcement agencies involved. For the state police, it was important not to slight other agencies. Deciding who had jurisdiction was an important political task.

Within days of Rifkin’s arrest, police located the body of Iris Sanchez under the mattress at JFK Airport, and an unidentified woman in the dense pine barrens off Route 31 in Westhampton. The skeletal remains had been buried beneath heavy underbrush in the woods near a power line tower.

Cops identified Tiffany Bresciani, the woman in the back of the pickup. They matched names with bodies they’d already found in the last two years—Anna Lopez, Mary Ellen DeLuca, Leah Evens, Lorraine Orvieto, Barbara Jacobs, Yun Lee, Mary Catherine Williams, and Jenny Soto.

They continued to work on the others—including locating the body of Julie Blackbird, a Texas native Rifkin had confessed to killing. She was thirty-one when she’d disappeared off the streets of lower Manhattan. She’d had a lengthy record of arrest, including two for drug possession and six for prostitution.

Police also wanted to find out about the three bodies Rifkin said he’d dismembered, and the still-unidentified woman in the third steel drum.

For several days, a dozen state police in Rockland County hunted for another victim believed to have been dumped in a wooded area about twenty miles north of New York City. Rifkin had given investigators copious directions; he even drew a map. He explained that he’d picked up the woman last fall and killed her. Then he’d dumped her body not far from the intersection of Routes 303 and 59 in West Nyack.

Police took four dogs along for the search. They turned up nothing.

State police also searched areas of the campus of the State University at Farmingale, where Rifkin had attended horticulture courses. They hunted at Kev’s Landscaping and Design, where Rifkin had rented space for his trailer. During the interrogation, Rifkin had confessed to storing bodies there too.

Owner Kevin Seck wasn’t surprised to see police at his door. Ever since he’d heard the news about Joel Rifkin, he’d been expecting them.

“I don’t want any negative publicity,” Seck said at once, even before the detectives spoke. “Is everything going to be kept quiet?”

Investigators assured him it would be. A few hours later, seven cops arrived with dogs. Seck unlocked the gate and showed them where Joel Rifkin had stored his equipment. Police thanked Seck for his cooperation. They didn’t have a search warrant, but Seck told them it didn’t matter. They were welcome to look around all they wanted.

“Just please,” he reminded the cops, “let’s keep this quiet.”

Seck doesn’t know who leaked the news—the police say the district attorney’s office, and the DA blames the cops—but within a few hours hordes of reporters and film crews were at his gate. They snapped photos of the police and dogs digging and exploring. Finally, Seck escaped to his home. When he arrived, he found a Newsday reporter and photographer waiting on his front porch.

“No comment,” the landscaper said curtly.

Seck’s worst fears were realized. The next day the New York Post mistakenly ran a picture of Seck’s other business—a shopping mall—with the tagline HOUSE OF HORRORS. The article went on to say that Joel Rifkin had stored bodies behind the mall.

Seck was irate. It was bad enough that his landscaping business was connected to Joel Rifkin. But now his shopping mall.…

He called a lawyer. “I’m going to sue those guys,” he grumbled.

He thought of Spaceplex, the indoor amusement park in Nesconset, Long Island. It had gotten a bad rap the year before when a Bay Shore man announced the child he had taken there had been kidnapped. It turned out that the man, John Esposito, had made up the story. In reality, he’d locked the ten-year-old girl, Katie Beers, in a dungeon he’d built beneath his garage.

Even after the truth came out, Spaceplex owners suffered a drop in business. Kevin Seck drove to work wondering if now his shopping mall would too.

He tried not to worry about it. Maybe no one would remember. Seck wanted to forget he’d ever heard the name Joel Rifkin.

He got out of his car and walked toward the mall.

“Hey, got any dead bodies in there?” a young man yelled out.

*   *   *

At 1492 Garden Street, crowds gathered daily. One of the first spectators to arrive on the scene was a young man named Seth Frankel. The teenager from Merrick, Long Island, had achieved some notoriety in the past year. Frankel lived down the block from Amy Fisher. When reporters and camera crews filled the streets outside his home, Seth Frankel managed to present himself as a good friend of Amy’s. In fact, he told reporters earnestly, he’d even seen naked photographs of her.

None of that was true. Still, Frankel had schmoozed his way onto several talk shows. He was quoted in various newspapers and in a book about Fisher. When the fuss along Berkley Lane finally died down, Seth Frankel was disappointed.

So when the Joel Rifkin story broke, the young man grabbed a friend and headed to East Meadow. He wasn’t going to miss the excitement.

Hanging out by the house, he was heard to say that he knew Joel Rifkin. Pretty well, in fact.

Reporters quickly spread the word to newcomers: Don’t pay any attention to this kid.

Meanwhile, photographers camped out on the sidewalk were rapidly getting bored. Reporters had neighbors to interview; they had nothing to photograph. Jeanne and Jan Rifkin seldom ventured out of the house.

“Maybe Joey Buttafuoco will come over and offer consolation to the family,” one photographer suggested hopefully.

Another glanced at his watch. “He better not show up until two-thirty—when I’m on overtime,” he said.

The first one yawned. This was not a plum assignment.

But the Rifkin stint quickly got interesting. A free-lance photographer decided to shoot the large pile of debris in the Rifkin driveway. Police had not yet removed it.

From across the street, Frank Barton was watching. His temper flared.

The tall, imposing man had lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade. He liked Jeanne Rifkin. Over the years they’d often talked about gardening. Barton, too, was a talented landscaper.

Since Joel Rifkin’s arrest, Barton and his wife, Judy, had tried to help Jeanne and Jan however they could. They brought groceries and watered the Rifkins’ garden. Barton told Jeanne Rifkin he’d try to keep the press from getting too close.

He took his promise seriously. When he spied the photographer stepping on the Rifkins’ driveway and snapping photos, Frank Barton barreled across the street.

“Get off the property,” he thundered. “What do you think you’re doing? What are you taking pictures of anyway? It’s garbage. What are you doing taking pictures of garbage?”

The photographer glanced up for just a moment. She continued her work.

“The mother doesn’t deserve this,” Barton growled. He turned away.

“What about the victims?” the photographer said softly, to no one in particular.

A crowd of journalists watched the exchange silently. This was getting interesting. Frank Barton wasn’t finished. He pointed to the film crew from Channel 7. A few of them were seated in folding chairs on the sidewalk.

“Is this a party over here?” Barton bellowed. “Do you mind removing the lounge chairs? This isn’t a picnic.”

The journalists exchanged glances. Barton continued to rage.

“This woman is suffering,” he said loudly, motioning to the Rifkin house. “She didn’t do anything. Neither did the sister. Leave the poor lady alone.”

The photographers rolled their eyes as Barton stormed back into his house. They moved their chairs from the sidewalk to the street.

“Happy now?” one said to himself.

“Maybe he’s an accomplice,” another added.

Frank Barton watched from his living room window. Lounge chairs in the street, indeed.

“Wise guys,” he muttered.

A few days later, Frank Barton emerged from his house again. He had another problem with the press—a big one. And this time everyone at the scene agreed he was right.

A TV cameraman had walked up the Rifkins’ driveway into the backyard. Back turned, he’d urinated. Barton was watching from his living room window. He practically turned white.

He blasted out of the house and shouted at reporters.

“Look at your colleague,” he yelled. “Why don’t you take a picture of that? Why don’t you put that in your newspaper? You’re getting all the dirt. Why don’t you print that?”

At that point, the cameraman returned to the sidewalk.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Barton shouted.

The man didn’t seem chagrined.

“They won’t let me go in the house,” he said, shrugging. “What am I supposed to do?”

“That’s your problem,” Barton snapped. “Next time, bring your own facilities.”

Later, a few journalists approached Frank Barton and apologized for their colleague.

“We’re not all like that,” said Roger Stern from WNBC-TV.

Barton was slightly mollified.

“Some of you guys are okay,” he conceded.

*   *   *

As the weeks passed, Frank Barton found a new enemy: the spectators. At least the reporters, he had to admit, were doing their job. But the constant flow of tourists to the corner of Garden Street and Spruce Lane was driving him crazy.

“Look at these people,” he’d often say to his wife. “They stand and watch for hours. What are they looking at?”

Barton became pretty good at sending spectators off on a chase.

One Saturday, a group pulled up. A young man leaned out the car window.

“Do you know where Rafkin lives?”

“Who?” asked Barton, faking interest.

“Rafkin. Joe Rafkin.”

“Don’t know anyone by that name.”

“You know, the killer.”

“Oh,” Frank Barton nodded enthusiastically. “Of course. He lives down there.” He pointed. “About two blocks. Maybe three.”

The man looked confused.

“No, no,” he said. “I think he lives right around here.”

“Sorry,” Frank Barton said without a hint of a smile. “He lives down there.”

“What they expect to see, I don’t know,” Barton later grumbled to his wife, Judy. “Look, here’s another one. Looking at the wrong house. Oh. Now he gets it. Now he’ll make a U-turn, come by, and stare. Genius.”

*   *   *

For Frank Barton and others in East Meadow, the unfolding of Joel Rifkin’s murderous deeds meant an ugly stain on their hometown. Everyone knew how Merrick and Massapequa, Long Island, had quickly become synonymous with Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco. Residents in East Meadow were determined to ensure their town wouldn’t be the same.

Ben Mevorach, news director of WGSM, a Long Island radio station, grew up in East Meadow and went to high school with Joel Rifkin. He fought the urge to ignore the story.

“Part of me is very defensive,” he said. “We don’t want East Meadow to be smudged the way Amy Fisher smudged Merrick. But how can I walk away from covering a major story?”

He didn’t. On the air, he offered his memories of Joel Rifkin and reported the various updates given by the state police. But Mevorach grew tired of the story, fast. His mother, Libby, did too. Once when she was out shopping she came home to a message on her answering machine. It was a salesman, calling from another state.

“Geez,” the voice said. “I guess no one’s home in East Meadow anymore. Ha-ha. Just kidding.”

Libby Mevorach called her son at the radio station and told him about the message. “You might want to use this on the air,” she said. “Although I don’t find it funny.”

*   *   *

Long Island’s Jewish community, too, was sensitive about Joel Rifkin. Jewish residents were frequently heard noting that Joel Rifkin was actually adopted—he probably wasn’t Jewish after all. It had been the same thing with David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer. He, too, was adopted.

Alan Whitlock, Rifkin’s high school friend, even got a call from a reporter who worked for an Israeli newspaper.

“How do you feel that a fellow Jew is a serial killer?” the reporter asked.

Whitlock was stunned. He told the reporter that it meant nothing to him. Joel Rifkin’s religion was completely irrelevant.

“Is that what you’re calling me for?” he asked. “How can I answer something like that? I’d feel bad if anyone did what he did. How do you think the families feel? Do you think they care if he’s Jewish?”

*   *   *

The Israeli paper wasn’t the only foreign journal interested in the story. Reporters from Australia and Japan were also seen on the corner of Garden and Spruce.

Probably the most-interviewed person in the early days of the story was Michael Brown. He lived a few blocks from the Rifkins. Brown, thirty-five, was honest enough to say from the start that he didn’t have much to offer: In the early 1970s he and his sister, Jacque, used to walk to Woodland Junior High School with Joel and Jan Rifkin. Brown had been inside 1492 Garden Street several times. Jeanne Rifkin had given him an occasional English muffin and cup of coffee—made mostly with milk.

That was pretty much it until September 1992. That’s when Brown ran into Joel Rifkin again. He, too, was assigned by a temp agency to work at Olympus America.

The two men chatted a few times, mostly commiserating over the low pay—six dollars an hour. Once, Brown gave Rifkin a ride home when Rifkin’s truck wasn’t working.

Not exactly a best buddy, but Michael Brown was good at giving reporters what they needed: pithy quotes about how surprising all this was, and how Joel Rifkin always seemed to be a quiet, nice man. Besides, when the Rifkin story broke, Michael Brown had another compelling draw for reporters: availability. He hung out in front of 1492 Garden Street all day for almost a week.

*   *   *

It wasn’t just news reporters and print journalists—the talk shows, too, were gearing up to cover the Joel Rifkin story. By 10:00 A.M. the day of Rifkin’s arraignment, two interns from the Sally Jessy Raphael show pulled up in a stretch limousine. When told there had been a flower delivery to the family, courtesy of the New York Post, the young women grabbed a local teenager and begged her to help them find the nearest florist. The three disappeared inside the stretch limo and sped off. A short time later they were back. Not long after that came a bigger, more luscious bouquet of flowers.

Watching the interns, a Newsday reporter laughed. “I can hear it now,” he said, imitating the pitch one of them might use to get them on the show. “‘I myself was a victim, stuck in the house, unable to talk to anyone. If you talk to Sally you’ll be okay. She understands. She knows what you’re going through.’”

A cameraman turned to the interns and asked the question everyone was thinking. “What’s the advantage for these guys to do it?” he said, motioning to the house, where Jeanne and Jan Rifkin remained hidden from the media.

The interns were ready. “Everyone loves Sally,” one explained earnestly. “She’s compassionate.”

Despite the interns’ best efforts, Jeanne and Jan Rifkin never appeared on Sally Jessy Raphael. Through Sale they made it clear: they weren’t giving interviews.

But Andrea Peyser, a New York Post columnist, did manage to land the much-sought-after interview with Jan Rifkin. The serial killer’s sister stepped out of the side entrance to the house one evening, not long after the film crews had pulled away. She puffed on a cigarette and walked her cat, Hector, on a long piece of twine.

As Jan and Hector headed down Spruce Lane, Peyser jogged up behind.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Peyser asked gently.

Jan eyed her suspiciously. Her eyes were red from crying. She didn’t answer.

Peyser tried again. “How are you doing?” she asked.

For a moment there was silence. Peyser waited, walking a few feet behind. The journalist suspected that Jan Rifkin really did want to talk.

Jan Rifkin began to ramble. “He’s not evil,” she said. “I’m not either. All I can say is I love my brother. I love him.”

Peyser nodded. She pulled out her reporter’s notepad and began jotting down Jan’s words.

Jan Rifkin glanced at her, annoyed. “You just want this for your paper,” she said curtly.

Of course, Peyser thought. What does she think?

The columnist tried to soothe the young woman.

“Yes, but don’t worry,” she said. “You can trust me.”

“I don’t know,” Jan said. “It’ll probably be distorted. I can’t trust anyone.”

She continued to walk Hector. Now and then she exchanged hellos with her neighbors. “We’re okay,” she called out. “We’re doing alright.”

Peyser followed behind. “I’m not going to hurt you,” the columnist insisted. “I just want to know how he is, how you are.”

The journalist bent down and began to pet Hector. Jan Rifkin took another puff of her cigarette and laughed.

“You must be desperate for a story,” she said.

Peyser smiled. She continued to pet the cat.

“I’ll talk about the cat, okay?” Jan suggested lightly. She gave a gentle tug at Hector’s leash and continued to walk down Spruce Lane.

“I love my brother,” Jan repeated. “He likes animals. He likes people. He likes everything. I spoke to him on the phone. He’s trying to have a life. He’s a person. I’m a person.”

She told Peyser that she knew something terrible had happened that day when she came home from work. She kept hoping that it was nothing—a traffic ticket—nothing at all.

“I only knew that he was in trouble,” she said softly.

Since her brother’s arrest, Jan Rifkin couldn’t sleep. She and her mother just cried for hours every day. “I’m not really here,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I keep thinking that I’m really experiencing this, but that I’m really not.”

Jan told Peyser she was bitter about the press coverage. After all, she and her mother were at an extremely difficult time in their lives.

“Why don’t you put yourself in my shoes?” she said bitterly.

A car door slammed. A reporter from the Daily News spotted Jan Rifkin and began to walk toward her. Jan grabbed Hector and sprinted into the house.

Peyser, disappointed at the intrusion, hurried back to her office to write the next day’s cover story.

Her chat with Jan Rifkin led the paper the next day.

Jan’s words ignited an angry reaction from Jenny Soto’s family. Jessy read the paper that morning and threw it on the floor. “Get in your shoes?” she grumbled. “Why doesn’t she get in our shoes? Feel how we feel?”

She looked at her baby for a long time and turned to her mother.

“If my son grows up and God forbid I smell something coming from my garage, I’ll go check,” Jessy said harshly. “And if he has scratches, I’ll ask him. That family—they want to be in denial.”

Jessy’s mother nodded, crying. “If I see his mother, I’ll kill her with my own hand,” Margarita Gonzalez whispered. “She should know what a lot of mothers are going through.”

*   *   *

In general, Jenny Soto’s family was unhappy about the media coverage of the case. They ached over a front-page story in the Daily News with a large photo of Jenny on the cover. Underneath it read SEX AND DEATH: INSIDE JOEL’S TWISTED WORLD. The story mentioned Jenny’s prior arrest for prostitution.

Popcorn came over that day, crying. Jenny’s body had been discovered on his birthday; just last month he’d laid a dozen roses at her grave. It was the day she would have turned twenty-four.

All the talk about Jenny being a prostitute stung. He had tried to forget about her earlier arrest. He couldn’t—he didn’t—believe she’d done it again.

“How could they say those things about her?” Popcorn said. “Don’t they know I loved her? She had a boyfriend. I would take care of her if she needed any money. It wasn’t like she had to go out on the street.”

Jessy nodded. “Mom would have given her money,” she said. “Besides, that night she was hanging out with me. She wasn’t prostituting. She didn’t have to go out there.”

Jessy continued to rock her baby. “Even if she did,” the young girl added softly, “he didn’t have to kill her.”