Chapter 6
BY the time he graduated from East Meadow High School in 1977, Joel Rifkin had goals—but little motivation to achieve them. At his parents’ urging, he applied to the State University at Brockport in upstate New York.
Rifkin had trouble staying focused. For the next decade his education was a series of stops and starts. He attended the Brockport school for two years, taking various liberal arts courses and living off campus in a town house complex. In the spring of 1980 he dropped out. He moved back to his parents’ home in East Meadow and enrolled at a nearby school, Nassau Community College. He took a range of courses over the next few years, but usually quit midsemester. By 1984 he’d earned only twelve credits.
His social life was practically nonexistent. Back in Brockport he’d had his first—and likely his only—girlfriend. For a year, he dated a heavyset woman he met on campus. The ex-girlfriend described him as “sweet, but always depressed.” During their relationship he cut classes and began to neglect his appearance. “He didn’t work hard at all,” she said. “I knew his parents were upset. He told me they were going to be very disappointed.”
* * *
In between attempts at his halfhearted academic career, Joel Rifkin worked at various jobs on Long Island, seldom earning above minimum wage. For a while he worked in sales at a Record World in the Roosevelt Field Mall in Hempstead. It seemed like a good job for him. As a teenager Joel Rifkin had spent many hours in that store, reading album covers and listening to piped-in tunes. He knew a lot about the latest bands.
But he had trouble keeping up with the pace. He easily fell behind in his work. And as it had been in other areas of his life, Joel Rifkin didn’t fit in with his peers. While other employees hung out together after work, Joel Rifkin kept to himself. Sometimes, at the start of his shift, he barely greeted coworkers.
Shortly after Rifkin’s arrest, a former manager from Record World called in to a New York radio station. Joel Rifkin, the man insisted, was one strange guy.
“He was a total piece of work,” he said. “This guy couldn’t even count to ten. Every time we tried to do deposits at the end of the day he would always foul up. He couldn’t get it right. He used to come in, dirt under his nails, oil or grease, God knows what else.”
Rifkin quit Record World after about a year. He took a part-time job as a salesman in a children’s store, Coronet Juvenile in Westbury. By now he was twenty-five years old and—except for his brief stint at Brockport—had never lived on his own. In the summer of 1984 Joel Rifkin rented a cramped studio on the second floor of a private house in Levittown. But in a short time he quit his job. It wasn’t long before he had trouble paying the rent. Joel Rifkin returned to 1492 Garden Street.
Over the next couple of years Rifkin drifted in and out of jobs. But he harbored a dream: he wanted to be a writer, a great one. He spent hours alone in his bedroom reading literary masters and struggling to compose his own poetry. Seldom was he satisfied with his work.
Jeanne Rifkin knew about her son’s passion for writing, and his aspiration for fame. At times, it worried her. Once she shared her concerns with her next-door neighbor, Joy Reiter. “You know, Joel has dreams,” she said almost sadly. “And I hope he will achieve them.”
Rifkin continued to dabble in photography. Once, on an outing with his parents to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, he brought along his camera and shot portraits of Ben and Jeanne in the Egyptian wing, before the Temple of Dendur.
Sometimes Rifkin took his camera to the beach. He snapped photos of the pier or a distant boat on the horizon. He experimented, capturing the same image over and over, varying the exposure slightly each time. His precision was an aberration: everything else in his life, it seemed, was aimless and chaotic.
His homelife had begun to unravel, too. In the fall of 1986, Ben Rifkin fell ill. Doctors gave a grim diagnosis: prostate cancer.
Ben Rifkin tried to make things easier for his wife and children. He kept his spirits up, and seldom complained, even when the pain was intense. But on February 20, 1987, a few weeks after his sixty-eighth birthday, Ben Rifkin could no longer endure the pain.
He took an overdose and wrote a note to his family: “Dearest Jeanne, Jan, and Joel, Please forgive me for committing suicide…”
At the funeral, Joel Rifkin, then twenty-eight, gave a eulogy. His words brought mourners to tears. The young man told the crowd that he was adopted, but that it hadn’t mattered in his family. His father, Joel said, was a special man.
“He did not give me life, he gave me love,” Joel said.
Although they were not religious, the Rifkin family sat shivah for the next week—the traditional Jewish mourning period. Neighbors brought plates of food, and friends dropped by. Those who loved Ben Rifkin shared their memories of him.
Soon after Ben Rifkin’s death, members of the library board agreed that he deserved a special remembrance for his years of service and devotion: that year, they named a wing of the branch in his honor.
* * *
In many ways, the suicide of his father caused Joel Rifkin to sink even deeper into the portentous and disturbing world he had created. As he had for years, Joel Rifkin continued to solicit sex from prostitutes. Late at night, he cruised the streets of Hempstead and lower Manhattan. Always, he was selective; he hunted for a long time before he chose a woman.
For some time, the fantasies must have been growing. Each time he had sex with a prostitute Joel Rifkin fought a troubling, rabid desire. His frustration and fury swelled.
Something would push him over the edge.
* * *
Some wonder if it was his relationship with Kathryn Mary Kelty. He met her a few weeks after his father’s death, when he stopped in a pizzeria on Bell Boulevard, in Bayside, Queens. Kelty, a waitress, was seated at a table, scribbling in a notebook. The two struck up a conversation. Kelty explained that she was working on a screenplay. Rifkin told her that he, too, was a screenwriter. He’d just completed a short story entitled “The Frosh,” about a student’s antics at college. Then he lied, telling Kelty he was a student at New York University.
Kelty, a divorced mother of two, was impressed. She and Rifkin exchanged phone numbers. Over the next few months they talked frequently about Kelty’s screenplay. Kelty liked to brag that she was an accomplished writer. She read a few of Rifkin’s works, and told him that he, too, had enormous talent. For perhaps the first time, Joel Rifkin felt important. Someone actually liked him—an attractive young woman who not only listened to his dreams but shared them as well.
Rifkin quickly became enamored of the sprightly blond. He began to hope their friendship would grow into something more.
In the summer of 1987 Kelty rented a one-bedroom apartment on Forty-ninth Street in Manhattan and invited Rifkin to move in, sharing the living room with another male roommate. Kelty outlined the conditions: he would pay rent, help keep the apartment neat, and most importantly, edit her screenplay.
Joel Rifkin agreed instantly. His mother was unhappy. It was just a few months after her husband’s death and Jeanne Rifkin was lonely. Besides, she was worried about Joel. She’d met Kathryn Kelty once, when Joel had brought her home. Jeanne Rifkin didn’t like her.
But Joel Rifkin was resolute; he packed a few things and left.
For a short time, the Manhattan arrangement worked nicely. To Rifkin’s disappointment, however, his relationship with Kelty remained platonic. Several times he attempted to kiss her but she always brushed him off.
At night, Rifkin joined her at after-hours bars and clubs. They went to Xenon and Area—all the fashionable spots in town. He passed up offers for drugs and didn’t drink. Every night was the same; as Kelty danced unrestrained for hours, Rifkin roamed the edge of the bar, silently watching the young woman move.
When the pair left the clubs it was usually near dawn. Joel Rifkin always eyed the prostitutes traipsing along Ninth Avenue. His fascination for the girls of the street never diminished.
After six weeks, Kelty and Rifkin had a falling-out. He hadn’t worked at all on her screenplay, and she was getting tired of his excuses. Then Rifkin took a job at a courier service. Kelty was indignant. Now, she figured, he’d never start editing.
In a heated argument, Kelty pulled out a knife and threw Rifkin out of the apartment. “Pack your things and get out,” she screamed. Years later, she explained it to detectives.
“I just couldn’t stand him anymore,” she said.
It is unclear if Rifkin knew at that time how Kathryn Mary Kelty made her living. Now, Kelty will only say that she is “retired” and has AIDS. But police believe she had worked the streets.
One thing Kelty wants made clear: she was never Joel Rifkin’s girlfriend. When her name and picture emerged following Rifkin’s arrest, some of the media reported she was. “I never fucked him,” she told reporters. “But this creep was crazy about me. I’m lucky to be alive.”
* * *
The experience with Kelty unsettled Rifkin. He felt rejected and bitter. Once again he moved back to his second-floor bedroom at 1492 Garden Street. All of the plans he’d made with the young woman—the vision of being famous writers—were destroyed. Joel Rifkin had yet again failed to make his mark.
At home, the mood was somber. In the months following her husband’s death, Jeanne Rifkin had become withdrawn. She didn’t return friends’ phone calls and seemed to lose interest in everything. She dropped weight and stopped coloring her hair. Overnight, it seemed, her dark curls turned to gray and then to white. Suddenly, Jeanne Rifkin looked old.
Neighbors tried to help. Joy Reiter called out to Jeanne that summer after Ben’s death, when she and her husband, Hal, were relaxing on lounge chairs in their yard.
“Jeanne, come sit with us,” Joy said kindly.
Jeanne Rifkin did. Through her tears, she told her old friends how unhappy she was. She broke down crying. “I miss Ben so much,” she kept saying.
Over time, Jeanne Rifkin tried to channel her energy back into the projects she’d always enjoyed. She continued working in the garden. By then she’d expanded it—she planted flowers and bushes along a small strip next to the garage, an area that had previously been a patch of grass. Occasionally, Joel helped his mother move heavy bushes.
* * *
That summer, Joel Rifkin may have tried to turn his life around. He announced plans to open a landscaping business. He also decided to go back to school, this time to study horiticulture. Jeanne Rifkin was pleased. Her son finally appeared to have a clear vision for the future. Joel Rifkin bought a 1978 Chevy van to use for the business, and applied to the agricultural program at the State University of New York at Farmingdale.
But Joel Rifkin’s hidden longings continued to disrupt his world. A few weeks after he moved back to East Meadow, Rifkin was arrested by Hempstead Village cops for offering a prostitute twenty dollars for oral sex. It was shortly after midnight on August 22, 1987. Rifkin posted the $75 bail himself, but ignored a court appearance a few months later. Eventually, he paid a $250 fine.
Rifkin did not say a word about the incident to anyone. He was grateful his mother didn’t know. She was suffering enough.
In the fall, a few weeks after his arrest, Rifkin enrolled in the two-year agricultural college at the State University at Farmingale. He did well in his classes in ornamental horiticulture. After his first year, he applied for an internship at Planting Fields Arboretum in Upper Brookville. Plantings Fields is a 409-acre public garden on the North Shore of Long Island. It has approximately 160 acres of gardens and plant collections, 40 acres of lawns, and 200 acres of fields and woodlands.
To be considered for the internship, Joel Rifkin wrote an essay explaining why he wanted to be a horticulturist. Then, he was interviewed by the assistant director. He was one of a handful who were accepted.
It was quite an achievement. Jeanne Rifkin was delighted. Joel Rifkin was assigned to the grounds crew—planting and watering, and mowing lawns. He made slightly more than minimum wage, and worked there for almost ten months.
But again Joel Rifkin had trouble connecting with others. His employers didn’t feel he showed the same enthusiasm and love of nature as the other interns. Within weeks, Rifkin drifted off on his own, barely speaking to anyone.
Rifkin became widely known at the arboretum for his strange designs. Shortly after he began working on the grounds he planted annuals in one of the specialty gardens. It was an area on the north border of the park reserved for dwarf conifers—naturally occurring pine trees. When the annuals blossomed, jokes were traded throughout the arboretum.
“It’s so inappropriate,” longtime horticulturist Bill Barish used to think when he saw the flowers sprinkled among the diminutive pine trees. “How silly it looks.”
Barish wasn’t surprised to hear from his colleagues that it had been the intern, Joel Rifkin, who planted the annuals. “He might have studied horticulture, but his ideas are a little off the wall,” Barish said, shaking his head.
* * *
In the spring of 1989, almost at the end of the SUNY agricultural program, Joel Rifkin’s grades plummeted and he dropped out. By then, his internship at Planting Fields had ended.
It was April of 1989. Rifkin decided to concentrate on his landscaping business. He registered a trailer and hooked it to his green Chevy van.
He got a few jobs right away: SUNY Farmingdale and Planting Fields, after all, were solid credentials.
One of his first tasks was to take care of the grounds of the Casey estate in Rosyln Harbor, Long Island. William Casey, the former director of the CIA, had died two years before. His widow, Sophia, called Planting Fields, looking for a gardener. Someone suggested Joel Rifkin.
Sophia Casey explained her needs; she wanted Rifkin to dig up a troublesome patch of grass in the yard and replace it. The area was zoysia, a perennial with fine wiry leaves. She wanted it replaced because it didn’t turn green as early as the rest of the lawn. She told Rifkin she would pay him eight dollars an hour. She expected him to work every day.
He didn’t. For the next two months Rifkin worked sporadically, and never seemed to accomplish much. Then one day he left and never returned.
* * *
Joel Rifkin’s world had begun a faster downhill spiral. His business was a failure. He’d never completed his schooling. He got into several car accidents and was ticketed for speeding. Rifkin never paid fines, so his license was suspended and his registration revoked. He began to dress slovenly. After working on lawns or tinkering underneath his trucks all day, Rifkin seldom cleaned up. With grease and dirt under his nails, his appearance deteriorated.
Even some of the prostitutes in New York City say they turned him down. There was something unappealing about Joel Rifkin. Something odd. Always, it seemed, he looked as if he had a secret. An eerie secret.
Indeed he did. His fantasy world was on the fringe of becoming reality. The almost painful urges he must have been fighting since adolescence grew too powerful. The visions consumed him.
By then, Rifkin had stopped soliciting hookers on Long Island; the arrest in Hempstead had scared him. Instead, he’d begun to travel into Manhattan, cruising the Lower East Side off Allen Street, and Twelfth Street and Second Ave.
It was time. Joel Rifkin was about to make his mark. No longer would he feel inadequate. Women like Kathryn Mary Kelty could never reject him again.
Now, he even had role models. In recent months, Rifkin had begun to follow the trial of Arthur Shawcross, the Rochester man accused and eventually convicted of killing eleven prostitutes. Rifkin carefully clipped out newspaper articles about the killings. He was keeping a scrapbook.
He also studied the case of an unknown serial killer, who police believe was responsible for the murders of forty-nine women in the Seattle area. Rifkin even read a book on the subject: The Search for the Green River Killer.
Both serial killers picked up prostitutes, had sex with them, and then murdered them. In most instances, they tied up their victims. They enjoyed watching the terrified young women scream for their lives, begging for mercy.
Perhaps Joel Rifkin thought he would too.