(Originally published by the Daily News on June 29, 1993. This story was written by Helen Peterson, Tony Rogers, Corky Siemaszko, and Mike McAlary.)
Joel Rifkin had killed 17 women, and now he was driving around with one in the back of his truck.
The state troopers tailing him before dawn yesterday were sure he wanted to get arrested. First, he made sure there were no license plates on his 1984 Mazda pickup. Then Rifkin tried to lose them in what can only be described as a slow-speed chase, never exceeding 50 mph on the Southern State Parkway during the 20-minute pursuit. He finally obliged them by crashing into a utility pole in Mineola, L.I.
After the troopers handcuffed the 34-year-old landscraper early yesterday morning, one of them noticed a terrible oder and flashed a light onto a blue vinyl tarp. One trooper rolled it back and made the horrifying discovery.
“I killed her,” Rifkin told Troopers Deborah Spaargaren and Sean Ruane. “She was a prostitute.”
The 5-10, gray-eyed confessed killer would later claim 16 more victims — all picked up on his drives through the region. He said he had sex with them first, then killed them. If he is to be believed, he becomes the region’s worst serial killer.
“All indications are that we have in custody a person who has committed multiple homicides,” said state police Maj. Anthony DiResta. “The degree of detail provided in the suspect’s description gives us reason to believe this may be the largest case of serial murder since the Arthur Shawcross killings around Rochester in 1987 and 1989.”
Story cold told
The first admission was cold and bloodless, the troopers later told their superiors. Rifkin, they said, admitted picking the woman up near Williamsburg Bridge on Allen St. in Manhattan last Thursday night. He said he strangled her and hid her body for three days before placing it in the truck. He said he was headed to Republic Airport in Farmingdale, L.I.
The murder suspect, described as unemotional, was led back to the Troop L Barracks in Farmingdale, where he was questioned by state investigators. Steadily, over six hours, Rifkin confessed to a stunning list of murders.
“I killed 17,” Rifkin finally admitted.
He went through them one by one. Sometimes he remembered only a street name. Sometimes he could remember the face. He talked, too, about the jewelry the women wore. He gave the troopers specific information on how he had suffocated or strangled 17 women, how he favored white, Latino and Asian women, and how he dumped or buried the bodies.
“We kept asking him, ‘What about this one?'” said a law enforcement source. “And he kept saying things like, ‘I killed that one. That one was easy.’ This guy seems like the real deal.”
As of last night, state investigators believed they had linked Rifkin to two murders. They know the body in the truck is his work, and they believe he killed another prostitute in Southampton Township last month, dumping her body on Route 51.
“He never gave us motive,” said a law enforcement source. “But he said he’s been picking up prostitutes — his word is ‘patronizing’ them — since he got his license. He got his license when he was 16. That scares the hell out of us.”
It was impossible to say definitely last night whether Rifkin was telling the truth or simply regurgitating stories about murdered prostitutes he might have read in a newspaper, state police said. However, they were taking his claims seriously enough to rush a team of investigators to Southampton — where Rifkin said he dumped three bodies.
They also got a search warrant for his home on Garden St., East Meadow, but said they did not expect to find any bodies there.
Rifkin told investigators his victims were prostitutes. He said he routinely cruised the streets of New York City looking for victims. He offered them money for sex and killed them after the act.
Rifkin, the adopted son of the late, respected East Meadow school board vice president, Bernard Rifkin, told probers of gruesome burials. He claimed to have placed bodies in oil drums and dumped them in the Hudson and Harlem rivers. He also recalled dumping one woman’s body in Brooklyn’s Coney Island Creek and burying another in a town dump in Somers, in Westchester.
“Even if he is telling the truth, we may never be able to find all the bodies,” a law enforcement source said.
Painstaking process
Investigators in Suffolk, Nassau New Jersey and New York City were working with state probers to identify victims. Discussions between Rifkin and investigators were cut short last night when he obtained a lawyer.
“It’s frighteningly possible that he killed 17,” said one high-ranking state police source. At a press conference last night, state police Capt. Walter Heesch said Rifkin is charged with one count of second degree murder and will be arraigned in Hempstead District Court today.
State police sources said Rifkin had been employed several years ago at Planting Fields Arboretum a well-maintained public garden on the North Shore. He is unemployed, police said.
“Joel Rifkin was an intern at the Planting Fields five years ago. To the best of my memory, he was a student at SUNY at Farmingdale at the time,” said Owen Smith, president of Friends of Planting Fields. “Some 30 to 40 days after he began work, he just drifted off as it became apparent to us and to him that he wasn’t working out. He didn’t seem to connect to his colleagues, and there was none of the love of nature that marks so many of our interns.”
The grisly case began innocuously enough, when state troopers noticed Rifkin’s pickup about 4 a.m. on the Southern State Parkway. The beige Mazda truck lacked license plates.
Ordered to pull over
The troopers said that using a loudspeaker, they ordered Rifkin to pull over. He ignored them and continued onto Wantagh Ave. north and onto Old Country Road West.
Trooper Thomas Collins said Rifkin was not speeding and did not appear to be trying to elude the troopers. “The driver simply refused to pull over,” Collins said.
After about 4 miles, Rifkin lost control of his pickup and plowed into a light pole on Old COuntry Road in Mineola. He offered no resistance, stepping out of the truck and lying flat on the ground.
The investigator who nailed Shawcross, state police Capt. Edward Grant, has been assigned to the Rifkin case. Long Island-based police have little experience with serial killers, so Grant will link local cops up with two programs designed for tracking cases like these.
The first is the state police department’s Homicide Assessment Lead Tracking program (HALT). The other is an FBI program — the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or VICAP — which uses psychological profiles to track potential serial killers. The model used in the movie “Silence of the Lambs” was based on the FBI program.
Local authorities also will tap into the FBI’s violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which tracks serial killers, DiResta said.
Rifkin was transferred from State Police Headquarters to Nassau County Police Headquarters in Mineola at 9:30 p.m.
If the judge in the 1st District Court in Hempstead decides that Rifkin should be held without bail, he will be transferred to the Nassau County Jail in East Meadow.
Yesterday, at the two-story, gray-and-white corner house Rifkin shares with his mother and sister, police cordoned off the lawn to keep curious neighbors and reporters away.
