Chapter 19
AS of this writing, Joel Rifkin is being held in protective custody in Building B of the Nassau County Correctional Facility, not far from the cell where Amy Fisher was imprisoned. Rifkin’s six-by-nine foot cell has a bunk and a commode. It faces a corridor, so he is watched by corrections officers at all times.
In jail, Rifkin reads newspapers and watches accounts of himself from a television in the lobby. He eats a muffin, cereal, and fruit for breakfast. Sometimes he has hot dogs and baked beans for lunch, spaghetti, veal patty and green beans for dinner. Officials say he is a quiet inmate.
He meets frequently with Robert Sale. They discuss what exactly Rifkin told investigators and how the attorney plans to defend him. Sale explains pending motions and what they mean for Rifkin’s defense.
Under state criminal procedure law, a murder case can be prosecuted in the county where a killing occurred or where the body was found. In Rifkin’s case, the bodies of the fourteen victims that have been linked to him are spread over nine New York State counties: New York County (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, Bronx, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Orange, and Putnam. Police are still searching in the Nyack and Harriman areas of Rockland County, in New York City, and in New Jersey for four missing bodies.
In mid-July Sale proposed that the nine counties consolidate their cases and hold a single trial in one county on all charges. The advantage of a single trial is that Sale would have to convince only one jury that his client did not commit these murders, or, as is the more likely scenario, that his client was not responsible for his actions.
Technically, state law precludes such a joint trial; however, district attorneys have the discretionary authority to approve it. In this case, though, most of the prosecutors rejected the suggestion outright. It was a blow to Sale’s defense, although not an unexpected one.
So now, a squadron of prosecutors is attempting to sort out where Joel Rifkin will be tried and in what order to bring the cases. The prosecutors must be careful: Their first case against Rifkin should be the strongest, since an acquittal in the first trial could weaken all the other trials. They must also take pains to avoid ego rivalries over the case. No doubt few prosecutors would willingly yield authority in such a high-profile case. To win the murder conviction that sends Joel Rifkin to prison would surely bolster any prosecutor’s career.
It is almost unquestionable that the first trial—the one with the strongest evidence—will be for the killing of Tiffany Bresciani. Prosecutors can directly implicate Rifkin through the finding of Tiffany’s body in the truck. A trial is expected to be held in early 1994 in Nassau County, where the body was discovered.
Sale is currently mapping out his defense strategy. He will surely try to suppress the statements Joel Rifkin gave to investigators. The attorney will argue that without a videotaped confession, or a written account of the crimes, his client should not be held to verbal admissions.
An insanity defense is almost guaranteed. But with it goes a rigorous fight. To be acquitted under such a plea, the defense has to prove that at the time of each murder, the suspect was suffering from a mental disease or defect, and failed to know or appreciate that what he was doing was morally wrong.
Sale will attempt to prove it. He’s done it before. In the mid-1970s he won an acquittal for Mate Ivanov of Mineola. Ivanov, who spoke seven languages and had an IQ of 165, admitted chopping up his wife, three children, and the family dog with a bayonet. He fled to Florida and attempted to swim to Cuba. At the trial, a host of psychiatrists testified that Ivanov was sane.
But Robert Sale convinced a jury otherwise. Mate Ivanov was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and now lives freely in France. Sale calls his former client a productive person. He says Ivanov keeps in touch with him.
Prosecutors want to ensure that Joel Rifkin never goes free. They will likely fight an insanity defense by calling psychiatrists to testify that Joel Rifkin knew that what he was doing was wrong. They will certainly point out that Rifkin methodically planned the murders and the disposal of the bodies, and that he tried to conceal his link to the victims. Additionally, Rifkin has not shown any sign of mental disturbance while in custody. And he does not have a lengthy record of psychiatric problems.
* * *
As the legal system presses its case against Joel Rifkin, state police officials have unfinished work. As of this writing they continue to hunt for the four bodies they have not yet found but believe are Rifkin victims. And they still don’t know the identities of three of the bodies they already have.
Colonel Wayne Bennett, head of the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, is not optimistic. “Without the further cooperation of Mr. Rifkin, we may never make a positive identification,” he has said. “We have no names, only approximate dates, approximate circumstances and locations. It’s not precise enough.”
About a week after the arrest, state police went back to 1492 Garden Street. Several days before, they had identified the body of the eighteenth Rifkin victim—Mary Catherine Williams—the one Rifkin never mentioned. With that new information, cops requested and were granted a second search warrant. They combed the house again.
This time, investigators gathered several used condoms and a hypodermic needle and syringe, believed to have been from one of the victims. They also took more mundane household items—sheets, towels, pillowcases, typewriter ribbons, plastic wrap, books, magazines, a shower curtain, even a barbecue grill cover.
From the garage, they collected axes, machetes, pruning shears, a chain saw, a sickle, a coping saw, a knife, and duct tape. They removed a stain sample from the garage floor, which they believe to be blood.
They are looking for traces of blood or hair on the items that may be linked to victims. Once the evidence has been examined, state police officials will decide whether to submit it for DNA analysis.
It continues to be a protracted investigation. Interestingly, officials of the New York State Police have not asked for help from the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. They have chosen, instead, to handle the case themselves.
The reason may date back to the handling of the Arthur Shawcross case. Sources say that in the case of the Rochester serial killer, state police did a thorough investigation, only to see the FBI’s BSU take credit. Traditionally, the FBI has been criticized for stepping over smaller police units.
“The FBI did not contribute what they claimed,” a law enforcement source said. “The whole philosophy of that unit is to help police and not steal the thunder. They blew it with Shawcross. They made public claims that they solved the case. And they didn’t. The state police did.”
* * *
Whoever uncovers the truth, Joel Rifkin will likely go down in the annals of history as one of the most prolific serial killers. He joins a grim team.
Of all sentenced serial killers, John Wayne Gacy still holds the record for the most convictions. On March 12, 1980, a Chicago jury found him guilty of murdering thirty-three young men.
Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were buried in the crawl space beneath his Norwood Park, Illinois, home. Nine bodies were never identified.
John Wayne Gacy was a well-known and active member of his community. He was a construction contractor, a part-time clown, and a Democratic precinct captain. But the short, stocky man had a nefarious side. His killing spree began in 1973, when he lured a sixteen-year-old boy to his ranch-style home and strangled him.
For the next five years, Gacy coaxed young men, often his own employees, to his home and forced them to have sex. He often tricked them into letting him put a pair of handcuffs on their wrists. He tortured them until he grew tired.
Then he murdered them. He told police he strangled each one by wrapping rope around the boy’s neck and twisting it with a stick. After he killed the young men, he would often sleep with the body for a day or two before burying it. When he ran out of room under the crawl space, he dumped corpses in a nearby river. One he put under the kitchen floor; another, in a backyard shed.
The ghastly story began to unfold on December 11, 1978, when fifteen-year-old Robert Piest disappeared. Piest had been hired by Gacy to work on a construction crew that was remodeling a local drugstore. A few weeks later, police got a search warrant for Gacy’s home. They began digging in the crawl space and in the garage. After the first three victims were found, Gacy confessed that there were many more. Piest, the killer’s final victim, was found in the Des Plaines River.
After Gacy’s conviction he was immediately placed on Death Row at the maximum-security Menard Correctional Center. He now claims he did not commit the murders and was convicted because of inadequate legal representation. Over the years, his attorneys have filed numerous appeals. But in the spring of 1993 the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the latest attempt to overturn the conviction. Prosecutors say that the ruling puts Gacy within a year of execution.
* * *
Ted Bundy was put to death in Florida in January 1989. In many ways, Bundy was an enigma. Growing up in Washington State, he was a Boy Scout who had his own paper route. As an adult, the handsome six-footer was the first in his family to graduate from college. Women found him charming. His nieces and nephews adored Uncle Ted. Bundy was a counselor at a Seattle crisis center, and as an assistant director of the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission he at one time wrote a pamphlet advising women how to avoid being raped. Once, he caught a purse snatcher in a shopping mall. The governor of Washington sent him a letter of thanks.
But beneath the wholesome veneer lurked a vicious killer. Bundy was ultimately convicted of three murders in Florida and has been linked to the deaths of as many as thirty-five other young women across the country. He would usually lure young girls and women into vulnerable positions, then bludgeon them with a crowbar that he had concealed in a cast on his arm or hidden under the seat of his car. He then had sex with the unconscious or semiconscious women, usually penetrating them anally. When he was done, Bundy strangled them to death and mutilated and dismembered the bodies. Sometimes he would return to a victim’s body and sexually attack the severed body parts—such as by ejaculating into a disembodied head.
Bundy murdered at least eleven women in Seattle. He then moved on to the ski resorts of Colorado, where he killed more. Twice he was caught, but he escaped. Eventually he fled to Florida.
On January 15, 1978, Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house and beat and strangled Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, both twenty. The key evidence against him was bite marks on Levy’s breast and buttocks, which the prosecution claimed could only have been made by Bundy. About a month later, twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach disappeared from her junior high school. Her decomposed body was discovered eight weeks later. Police discovered credit card receipts indicating that Bundy had spent the night before the murder nearby. They believe that Bundy suffocated the girl by shoving her face in the mud during his sexual assault.
A few days before his scheduled execution, Bundy announced he would give details of the murders for the first time. A handful of law enforcement experts flew in from around the country. Each was allotted several hours with the serial killer.
But Bundy continued the con. He revealed almost nothing.
* * *
Throughout the 1980s in Rostov Oblast, a Soviet province near the Black Sea, bodies of thirty-four young boys, girls, and women in their twenties were discovered in wooded areas. Each had been mutilated; sex organs and other body parts were missing.
Panic spread. Police pulled out all the stops, assigning hundreds of uniformed cops to patrol parks and public buildings throughout the area. The cops hoped that the killer would get nervous; now he’d have to shift to a more secluded area. At that point, undercover cops hoped to nab him.
The ruse worked. In November 1990, a police officer noticed a man emerging from the woods. He checked his identification and learned the man was Andrei Chikatilo, fifty-six. Police quickly discovered that Chikatilo’s name was on a list of previous suspects. When they checked his whereabouts on the nights of several of the murders, Chikatilo’s alibis didn’t hold up. He was arrested.
Police questioned Andrei Chikatilo for nine days but he admitted nothing. Finally, a psychiatrist was brought in. The doctor read aloud a profile of the killer that police had put together. It said the killer was likely a middle-aged, impotent man who was experienced in winning the trust of children. Recognizing himself, Chikatilo began sobbing. He confessed. Not only did he admit to the thirty-four killings police knew about, but he told them about more than a dozen others. In all, the innocuous-looking Russian had killed and cannibalized fifty-three people over a twelve-year-period.
Chikatilo told police that he lured children or drifters into the woods with promises of anything from vodka to chewing gum. He’d knock them unconscious and stab them repeatedly while he masturbated. Later, he cut out various body parts. Sometimes he ate them.
At his trial, Chikatilo sat behind a steel cage. Relatives of his victims filled the courtroom, screaming and banging on the cage. The serial killer began each day in court by haranguing the judge incoherently. Court-appointed psychiatrists could not say whether he was faking insanity.
It didn’t matter. Chikatilo was sentenced to death.
* * *
When police raided apartment 213 in a housing complex in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1991 they found body parts and human skulls from eleven victims. Sitting quietly on the couch was the killer—thirty-one-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer, a pale, soft-spoken man who worked in a chocolate factory.
Police, wearing oxygen masks and protective suits, discovered three heads in Dahmer’s freezer, one on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, five stowed in a box and in a filing cabinet, and two more stashed on a closet shelf. They found five full skeletons and remains throughout the apartment—including bones in cardboard boxes and decomposed hands and a genital organ in a lobster pot—as well as bottles of acid chloroform and formaldehyde and various tools, including three electric saws.
There was no food in the apartment, only condiments. Dahmer calmly explained that he ate the bodies of his victims.
At the trial, psychiatrists portrayed Dahmer as a disturbed young man—an alcoholic and a homosexual who despised gays, as well as a convicted child molester. They pointed out that Dahmer had been sexually abused at age eight, and grew up preoccupied with death and torture. Once, as a teenager, he had skinned and gutted a dog and then mounted the carcass on a stick next to a wooden cross. His stepmother told police that Jeffrey had developed an interest in chemistry. “He liked to use acid to scrape the meat off dead animals,” she said.
Dahmer began killing young men in 1985. He wasn’t stopped for six years. Once, in May of 1991, he was almost caught. He had drugged a fourteen-year-old Laotian boy, Konerak Sinthasomphone, but the teenager managed to escape. Dahmer chased the naked, bleeding boy down an alley behind the apartment complex. Police were called but the boy was dazed and unable to respond. Dahmer explained that the two were homosexual lovers and had had a spat. After police left, Dahmer led Sinthasomphone into his bedroom and strangled him to death.
Dahmer was finally apprehended a few months later when another man, also drugged, was able to escape. The man flagged down a patrol car and told police that the man in apartment 213 had a big knife under his bed and was trying to kill him. When they entered the apartment, they found the horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer’s murderous past.
* * *
The sordid list continues. There was David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, who shot to death six people and injured seven others in New York City. And Richard Speck, convicted of murdering eight nurses in Chicago in 1966. Also, Richard Trenton Chase, the Sacramento “Vampire Killer,” Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams, Charles Manson, William Heirens, Duane Samples, John Joubert, and Arthur Shawcross.
And now, Joel Rifkin, the Long Island serial killer. Earning a place on this macabre list may give the East Meadow man a perverse satisfaction.