Chapter 4

ABOUT the time the story was unfolding in the press, Robert Sale broke the news to Jeanne and Jan Rifkin. He called them at home, shortly after ensuring the interrogation had ended. Sale knew there wasn’t any easy way to tell the seventy-one-year-old and her daughter. But he didn’t want the family to learn about Joel’s arrest from the media. The attorney knew reporters would flock to the house immediately following the press conference.

Jan Rifkin had just returned from work. She pulled her Toyota to the curb a few hundred yards from the corner of Garden and Spruce. She couldn’t get closer—police cars jammed the street, and about a dozen cops milled around. Panicky, Jan Rifkin ran into the house. Neighbors heard her hysterical sobs from a block away.

When he called, Sale could hear Jan Rifkin crying in the background. He spoke to Jeanne Rifkin. He asked her to be calm, and to sit down.

“I want to tell you something,” he said gently. “This is not going to be pleasant. Joel is in custody. He’s fine. But he has been arrested and charged with a homicide, in connection with a body allegedly found in the back of his truck. He is not coming home tonight. He is being held for court in the morning.”

Sale paused. Jeanne Rifkin did not respond.

The attorney continued. “The police have said that Joel made a statement and as a result they are investigating other homicides. I have informed them that there will be no further questioning. I’ve requested that Joel be permitted to call you. In my opinion there might be a search warrant signed and the police might be searching the house later tonight. Don’t disturb anything. If anybody arrives with a search warrant, call me at home. It will be read to me over the phone. And get a proper receipt.”

Jeanne Rifkin could barely speak. She heard the attorney. She understood what he was saying. But she didn’t believe him. She couldn’t.

Sale asked Jeanne Rifkin to put one of the investigators on the phone. The attorney asked detectives to leave the house until they had a search warrant. The investigators complied. The screen door slammed as the men left the tidy living room of 1492 Garden Street, where they’d been waiting all day. Alone with her daughter, Jeanne Rifkin bent over in her chair. This couldn’t be happening.

By now, a crowd had gathered outside 1492 Garden Street. Police cordoned off the street, and manned the sidewalk in front of the house. Dozens of photographers and camera operators milled around. Residents stood on their porch steps. Reporters perused the neighborhood, anxious to interview anyone who knew Joel Rifkin.

The Rifkins’ next-door neighbors, Joy and Hal Reiter, spoke well of the family. They insisted Joel was a quiet, polite boy. Never any trouble. He and his sister were sweet, they said.

“I know it sounds like the kind of thing you always hear people say about someone who turns out to be a killer,” Joy Reiter said. “But I can only say good things about Joel and his family. It’s true.”

But even the Reiters confessed that there were unanswered questions about Joel Rifkin.

“I guess none of us really knows what goes on behind closed doors,” Joy Reiter said.

She glanced at the Rifkin house.

“I don’t know how his mother will get through this,” she said quietly.

*   *   *

As news of Rifkin’s arrest traveled, former high school classmates began to show up in the neighborhood. Alan Whitlock, a thirty-four-year-old electrician, was among the first to arrive. He knew Joel from the high school photo club. He’d been to the Rifkin house several times. Reporters pounced, encircling him and firing questions.

Whitlock’s mind was reeling. It was just by chance that he had been in the area when the news broke. That afternoon, he’d gone swimming in his mother-in-law’s pool in East Meadow, taking a break from the punishing heat. His wife, Sue, had waved from the porch.

“My sister just called,” she called out. “She said they found a body on the corner of Spruce and Garden. Thousands of people are there. And news trucks.”

Whitlock shrugged it off. But an hour later, when it was time to go home, he suggested they drive by the scene. It was only a few blocks out of the way.

As Whitlock neared, he noticed a childhood friend. He lowered the window.

“Hey, Al, didn’t you go to school with that guy?” the friend asked.

“Who?”

“Joel Rifkin. He’s the guy they arrested for murder.”

“It can’t be,” Whitlock said slowly. “There must be two of them.”

He turned to his wife. “I got to park the car,” he said.

With daughter Lindsay, three, in his arms, Alan Whitlock rounded the corner of Spruce and Garden. His wife held Timmy, age one. The Whitlock’s daughter Dawn, five, skipped on ahead.

Alan Whitlock couldn’t believe it. “I knew this guy,” he kept repeating. “I used to hang out with him.”

Sue Whitlock shivered. “Stop,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”

Whitlock pointed to 1492 Garden Street. He remembered the fancy garden in front. “See the house—I’ve been in that house,” he said.

Whitlock spotted another friend from high school. It was like old home week.

“Boy, this is something else, isn’t it?” the friend said. “Pretty bizarre.”

“Tell me about it,” Whitlock replied. “You know, I used to hang out in this house.”

The friend stopped. He stared. “You did?”

Before Whitlock could answer, the man began waving to reporters.

“Hey, over here,” he shouted. “This guy was friends with Joel. He hung out with him. Hey, over here.”

The red lights atop the camcorders went on. Microphones were thrust into Alan Whitlock’s face.

“How do you feel about this?” he was asked.

“Are you surprised?”

“What do you remember about him from high school?”

For twenty minutes, Alan Whitlock thought hard, trying to remember more about Joel Rifkin. He told reporters what he recalled—that Joel was quiet, a loner who didn’t have many friends. Whitlock insisted he couldn’t believe that the guy he knew from high school was capable of murder.

When the cameras went off and most of the reporters went in search of others, two reporters stayed with Whitlock.

“One more question,” a woman from the New York Daily News said. “Did Joel Rifkin ever mutilate animals?”

Whitlock laughed. “Are you talking about him or me?” he joked.

The reporter looked at him blankly. Whitlock decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to joke around.

“Come on,” he said, a bit annoyed. “How can you ask a question like that?”

“Well,” the reporter said. “Lately there have been animal mutilations on Long Island.”

Whitlock shrugged. As he turned to walk away, the other reporter, from the New York Post, grabbed his arm.

“Did you ever remember Joel having a social disease?” he asked.

Whitlock rolled his eyes. No, he didn’t. He certainly didn’t know Joel Rifkin that well.

“Look, that just wasn’t talked about back then,” he said. “I got to go.”

And he did.

*   *   *

Youngsters on bicycles roamed around the neighborhood. “Serial killers don’t live in East Meadow,” one was heard to say. “This is wild.”

Robyn Katz thought so too. The fifteen-year-old lived a few blocks away, on Lakeville Lane. On Monday night, not long after the news broke, she was on her way to hang out with friends at Prospect Park. She went the usual way, cutting through Garden Street.

Tonight, she could barely get through. She craned her neck to see what everyone was looking at. She squeezed past a few news trucks and sidled up to a state trooper.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Watch the news,” the trooper answered, turning away. The cop was getting tired of answering the same question.

Katz tried again.

“Really,” she said. “What’s going on?”

The trooper barely looked at her. “He killed prostitutes,” he said, pointing to 1492 Garden Street. “A serial killer.”

Katz hurried to the park. She shared the news with her friends. Later, she called her mother from a friend’s house.

“Did you hear about the serial killer that lives in East Meadow?” she asked.

Her mother, Myra, had. “You may not walk home alone,” she announced.

And Robyn didn’t.

*   *   *

For the first time, Joel Rifkin faced a barrage of cameras as he was escorted from the front door of state trooper headquarters and taken back to Mineola, to Nassau County police headquarters. It was just before 9:30 P.M., roughly eighteen hours since Spaargaren and Ruane had signaled him to pull over on the parkway.

Before he left trooper headquarters, police confiscated Rifkin’s clothing—the faded jeans, T-shirt, and red flannel shirt, even his shoes. The clothing was now considered evidence; police specialists would later examine it, looking for fibers, hair, and blood from Joel Rifkin’s possible victims.

The cops provided Rifkin with a standard-issue white jumpsuit, complete with a hood and covers for his feet. Rifkin ducked his head slightly as the cameras began to flash. He did not respond as reporters shouted out questions.

“Did you do it, Joel?”

“Did you kill those women?”

Troopers drove Rifkin to Nassau County police headquarters in Mineola, just a few blocks from the spot where police had nabbed him earlier that day. He was led into a holding cell. To his dismay, police confiscated his glasses. Everything was blurred. Almost immediately Rifkin felt the onset of a migraine.

Joel Rifkin lay on a hard bunk that night, the day’s events running through his mind. He must have known he would eventually get caught. He must have wondered why it took this long. For four years, he’d managed to keep his late-night carnage a secret. He’d fooled everyone: the cops, his family, even the young women who in desperation sold him their bodies. When they climbed into his car, they didn’t know they would soon die. By the time they did, it was too late.

But now, as he lay awake in a holding cell, Joel Rifkin may have realized that it was over for him, too. Perhaps, at last, his deadly passion would be quelled. Forever.

As Joel Rifkin pondered his fate that night, more than a dozen detectives, armed with a search warrant, entered 1492 Garden Street. Earlier that day, investigators had met with Assistant District Attorney Fred Klein, giving him the necessary information to request a search warrant. Klein had brought the court order to County Court Judge Joanna Seybert. She’d reviewed it, asked a few questions, and signed it. By 8:00 P.M. the search warrant was ready. The DA’s office delivered it to investigators.

The detectives displayed the search warrant to Jeanne Rifkin. She phoned Sale, and read it to him. The warrant permitted detectives to enter any room in the house—except for Jeanne and Jan Rifkin’s bedrooms. They were also permitted access to the detached garage. Sale reminded Jeanne Rifkin to get a receipt from the police for whatever items they removed.

Investigators brushed past a silent Jeanne Rifkin and climbed the stairs to her son’s second-floor bedroom. They pushed open the door and entered the private world of Joel Rifkin.

What they encountered rendered them speechless.