Chapter 17
IN the days following Joel Rifkin’s arrest, police had interviewed numerous prostitutes on the streets of Manhattan. The cops learned that Joel Rifkin’s pickup truck was a familiar sight on Twelfth Street and Second Avenue and at the corner of Allen Street and Rivington. The descriptions the young women gave were often similar: as the Mazda slowly cruised the streets, Joel Rifkin had carefully inspected each girl. He always took a long time to choose.
Was he deciding whom he wanted to die?
Perhaps. Yet not every one of his encounters with a prostitute led to murder. In fact, some women on the streets remembered Joel Rifkin as an ordinary, even gentle customer.
Experts aren’t surprised. They say that serial killers are often satiated after a murder; indeed, Joel Rifkin may have gone months without the desire to kill. Examining trophies—the credit cards, panties, and jewelry of previous victims—may have been enough to satisfy him.
But as the weeks passed, his lethal craving likely grew. And so Joel Rifkin would strike again. And again. His deadly tally climbed.
One woman survived two encounters with Joel Rifkin. She calls herself Charlotte Webb. She is twenty-seven years old, an emaciated heroin addict who works the streets of lower Manhattan. Despite the unremitting anguish of her life on the street, Charlotte Webb remains in many ways the young woman she was before heroin: warm and garrulous. She considers herself very lucky that she is not one of Joel Rifkin’s eighteen victims.
Charlotte began turning tricks when she was twenty. She was an exotic dancer, and for a while she worked in a New Jersey brothel. But in recent years she has been working the street, mostly around Allen Street and Rivington. In some ways, she is more fortunate than many prostitutes she knows: Charlotte has an apartment. It is a cramped, cluttered studio, but it is her own.
Joel Rifkin first approached Charlotte Webb in March or April of 1993. By then, his killing spree was nearing its end. He’d strangled at least seventeen women.
It was late morning. Charlotte was strolling Twelfth Street and Second Avenue. She was waiting impatiently for a client. She needed a fix.
The pickup slowed down. Joel Rifkin leaned out the window.
“Have you been working the street a long time?” he called.
Charlotte thought fast. The guy probably wanted a girl with experience—someone who was good at what she did, Charlotte thought. “Oh, yes,” she answered brightly. “I’ve been working quite a while.”
Joel Rifkin looked disappointed. “Well, no. I’m not looking for that,” he said. “I’m looking for someone who hasn’t been working a long time.”
He began to inspect the other women on the street. “What about that girl, the one over there?” he said, pointing. “Do you know about her? Has she been working long?”
Charlotte tried to help. She perused the street, telling the man in the pickup about a few of the other girls. He drove off, and Charlotte leaned against a building. Can’t please everybody, she thought.
Over the next few weeks, Charlotte noticed the Mazda pickup a few more times. She thought it odd how carefully the driver looked before he chose a date. Most men did inspect the girls, of course, but there was something different here. She shrugged it off. He would probably never stop for her again anyway.
A month later, however, he did. Charlotte was working a different area—Allen Street. That, and Twelfth and Second, were the only twenty-four-hour strolls in the city.
It was about noon. The Mazda slowed down.
“You been working the streets long?” Joel Rifkin asked.
Charlotte smiled. He didn’t remember her from the last time. And now she was prepared.
She shook her head emphatically. “Oh, I just did it a few times last summer,” she said. “I haven’t been doing this long. Pretty new at it, actually.”
“Alright, get in,” Rifkin said.
Charlotte climbed inside. The cab of the truck was a mess. She looked at Rifkin. He was too. Charlotte moved her feet gingerly, pushing aside the trash. Hopefully, she thought, this will be quick.
“What do you charge?” Rifkin asked.
Charlotte didn’t hesitate. “What do you think is reasonable?” she said smoothly.
It was her standard line. She had to be cautious. First of all, she didn’t want to name a price that was too high and scare the customer away. She didn’t want to make an offer that was too low, either. Besides, you never could be too sure. The client could be an undercover cop.
Charlotte had had a few experiences in the past in which potential clients refused to make the first offer. The men would go back and forth with her for a while, but Charlotte never gave in. In the end, she would simply refuse the job.
“If you’re not willing to cooperate with me, and give me something I can say yes or no to, I might think you’re a cop,” she’d say.
Once the man really was a cop. He had laughed.
“You deserve not to get busted because you’re smart,” he said.
* * *
Things went more smoothly with Joel Rifkin. He immediately offered his price.
“How about forty bucks?” he said.
Charlotte agreed. It wasn’t a great rate, but it would do.
“Okay, forty,” she said. “Maybe you’ll give me a tip if you like me in the end.”
Rifkin nodded. He put the truck in gear.
“I have an apartment,” Charlotte said. “It would be a lot safer.”
“Is anyone there?” Rifkin asked.
“No, I live alone.”
Charlotte gave him directions. Rifkin drove about a mile uptown and parked, just a few doors from a local police precinct.
On the way, they talked. Rifkin said his name was Jimmy. He was married, but going through a divorce. He had kids in college. It was a struggle to pay for their education.
Charlotte thought he seemed nice. “You seem lonely, like me,” she told him. “Well, you’ve got a friend. You can trust me.”
Joel Rifkin smiled at Charlotte Webb. “You’re nice,” he said. “You’re different than other girls.”
“Well, I like to be friends with people,” she said, returning the smile.
They went to her apartment. Charlotte Webb undressed and climbed into bed. She handed him a condom.
It was over quickly.
Normal, gentle, simple sex, Charlotte thought. An easy forty dollars.
As he dressed, Joel Rifkin told Charlotte he’d like to see her again. The young woman wrote down her name and address on a scrap of paper. She didn’t have a phone, she explained. It kept getting turned off.
“Come see me anytime,” she said, as he left. “You’ve got a friend.”
* * *
A few weeks later, less than a month before he killed Tiffany Bresciani, Joel Rifkin returned to Allen Street. When he spotted Charlotte, she waved. He unlocked the door of the pickup. She climbed in the car.
“I came back for you,” Joel Rifkin said.
Charlotte smiled. “Do you mind if I make a stop?” she asked.
Rifkin said he didn’t mind. He drove her to the corner of Clinton and Houston Streets and gave her the forty-dollar fee in advance. Charlotte disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned, she’d bought a half ounce of cocaine and two single portions of heroin.
“A lot of girls might have ripped you off,” she told Rifkin as she climbed back in the pickup. “I’m not like that.”
They went to her apartment. Charlotte slipped into the bathroom and did a speedball. Then they had sex. Once again it was uneventful. If Joel Rifkin had murderous intents, he didn’t show them.
They talked again, for almost half an hour. Charlotte told Rifkin she liked photography.
“See how big my hands are?” she said, holding them up. “I need an Olympus camera. It’s the most comfortable for my hands. A lot of people go for the camera by its brand name, but I go by the way it fits in my hands.”
“I work for Olympus,” Rifkin told her. “I do distribution. I could probably get you a discount on a camera.”
“That’d be great,” Charlotte said.
She didn’t believe him. She didn’t think he really worked for Olympus, and if he did, she certainly didn’t expect any camera discounts. She didn’t mind, though. In her business, Charlotte didn’t expect to hear much of anything that was true.
* * *
The next time Charlotte Webb saw Joel Rifkin his picture was plastered on the front page of all the New York City dailies. Two days after Rifkin’s arrest, Charlotte was home, sleeping, when the buzzer rang.
She didn’t answer it. She never did. It could be a cop.
It wasn’t. It was Russell Ben-Ali, a Newsday reporter, and his photographer. They’d been given a tip from a state police investigator. The name Charlotte Webb, with a midtown Manhattan address, had been found in Joel Rifkin’s bedroom.
When he got the lead, Ben-Ali had immediately headed uptown from his office. Charlotte Webb was probably another victim, he figured. But the cops had said they thought she lived with a boyfriend, a man named Jeffrey. Perhaps, the reporter thought, the boyfriend would consent to an interview.
When he arrived at the building, Ben-Ali buzzed the bell with the name Jeffrey next to it. Silence. He tried again.
“Maybe it’s not working,” he said to the photographer.
The two men decided to wait. Ben-Ali had been chasing leads on the Rifkin case for several days. This one seemed as if it had potential.
After about half an hour, a neighbor opened the door. Ben-Ali slipped in and knocked at the apartment number he’d been given by police.
Again, silence. He knocked a bit harder.
Charlotte was groggy from sleep. She roused herself and pulled on some clothes. “Who is it?” she called out.
Ben-Ali was taken aback. He hadn’t expected to hear a woman’s voice; he assumed Charlotte was a victim.
“I’m looking for Jeffrey, or else someone who might know Charlotte,” he said.
“Well, I’m Charlotte,” the voice sang out. “Who are you?”
Ben-Ali was even more surprised. There must be some mistake, he thought. Charlotte was supposed to be dead.
“I’m a reporter from Newsday,” he said. “My name’s Russell Ben-Ali.”
Charlotte still wasn’t ready to open the door. “Are you with that guy from the Village Voice?” she asked. “You know, he’s doing a book on me.”
“No, I’m not affiliated with him,” Ben-Ali explained. “I’m from Newsday. We’re doing a story on Joel Rifkin.”
At last the door opened.
“Really,” Charlotte said, her eyes widening. “I’ve been waiting to talk to someone about that. I didn’t know if the police would believe me. When I saw the picture of the pickup truck, I thought it might be him.”
Ben-Ali and his photographer entered the apartment. For the next ten minutes Charlotte chatted easily about Joel Rifkin. Wasn’t that amazing, she said. She wondered if she knew any of the women he’d killed. Now that she thought about it, Charlotte told the reporter, a few of her friends might be missing. This girl named Angie. Or was it Chelsea?
Suddenly, Charlotte Webb stopped. Until now she hadn’t realized the danger she had been in.
“How did you get my name?” she asked breathlessly.
“We got a tip from a detective,” Ben-Ali said. “Your name and address were found in Joel Rifkin’s house.”
Suddenly it came together. Charlotte got up and began walking in circles around her tiny apartment.
“My God,” she practically screamed. “It could have been me. It could have been me. I can’t believe I’m alive. I can’t believe it.”
For the next few hours Russell Ben-Ali tried to get Charlotte to remember her past encounters with Joel Rifkin. It was no easy task. Charlotte regularly trailed off onto other topics. Ben-Ali did his best to help her focus on Joel Rifkin.
By the time he left, the reporter had only half an hour before the evening’s deadline. Back in the office, Ben-Ali wrote his story speedily. The next day Charlotte Webb made the cover of Newsday. She was pictured leaning reflectively on the windowsill of her apartment. The quote above her said it plainly: MY GOD, IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME.
* * *
Charlotte Webb was delighted. She called her parents to make sure they’d bought the paper. She shot heroin. It was almost 4:00 P.M. before she returned home. When she did, two detectives were waiting. They had been camped out in front of her building for several hours.
The cops didn’t look twice as Charlotte brushed past them and unlocked the front door. “Idiots,” Charlotte mumbled to herself when the cops still didn’t recognize her.
She turned and smiled broadly. “Hi, I’m Charlotte,” she said. “Are you looking for me?”
“Oh, yes,” one said, clearly uncomfortable.
The two men showed their identification. O’Neill and Harris. New York State Police.
“We’re not here to bust you,” one said.
“I would expect not,” Charlotte quipped. “Come on in.”
They followed her inside. The detectives stood awkwardly in the small room.
“Why don’t you sit?” Charlotte said.
“No thanks,” one said. “We’re okay.”
Charlotte tried again. “I have a real nice rocking chair here,” she said, pushing the chair with her foot. “You sure?”
They were.
Guess they don’t want to seem too off-duty, Charlotte thought.
One of the men pulled out a photograph.
“Is this you?” he asked.
Charlotte looked at the image carefully.
“It isn’t me,” she said finally. “It looks like my friend Angie. She’s been missing for a while. I keep asking people, ‘Where’s Angie?’”
The cops showed her another picture. It was a young girl sitting on a fire hydrant.
“Is this the same girl?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But that’s definitely not Angie,”
The detectives exchanged glances. Charlotte caught on quickly. “You’re just testing me,” she said, laughing. “You want to make sure I’m telling the truth.”
For the next fifteen minutes, the detectives asked her about Joel Rifkin. Charlotte told them what she recalled. Then they gave her their business cards.
“You’ll call us if you think of anything else?” one asked. “And please give us a number when you get your phone hooked up.”
Charlotte promised she would. She closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief. The less contact with cops, the better, she thought.
Seconds later the detectives knocked again. Charlotte got nervous. Great, now they’re going to arrest me, she thought.
“What do you want?” she called out through the door.
“One more question,” one detective said. “Do you recall a tattoo on Joel’s chest?”
Charlotte made a face behind the door. “No, I don’t recall any tattoo.”
No answer. A few seconds later she heard the outside door open and close. Testing me again, she thought to herself.
* * *
Over the next few weeks Charlotte heard a lot of girls on the street claimed they had “dated” Joel Rifkin. She never challenged them. She just laughed to herself.
“They haven’t, but I really have,” she told a reporter. “Know what’s funny? I think they’re rather jealous of me.”