HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to set the scene. It's 1989. A young taut Henry Zebrowski with his parents exit a showing of Ghostbusters II at the regal cinemas in Jamaica, Queens.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. It's just like the origin story of Bruce Wayne.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As we were walking down the alleyway, my father in his top hat, my mother in her fur coat, and I and a Ghostbusters shirt and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle jogging pants that are covered in pizza stains-
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We walk down the street and then they are hastily gunned down.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I knew I had to take the streets back.
BEN KISSEL
You must.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
By becoming the dreaded nightmare of every criminal in Queens: Angina Man.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bringing angina to every fat fuck eating a chicken parm anywhere from Ozone Park to JFK airport.
BEN KISSEL
Hey man, let's get the heck out of here, Angina man's around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanna come closer because if not, I'm gonna take away your Zantac.
BEN KISSEL
It ain't easy being a criminal anymore!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Regal Park, Ozone Park, Woodhaven, Queens. This is all about my town, my fucking city, my fucking decade. Woo!
BEN KISSEL
The Last Podcast on the Left everyone. I am Ben.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck Citi Field, man. Fuck that fucking new ass shit.
BEN KISSEL
Hanging out with Angina Man Henry Zebrowski and Marcus Parks. Today's topic brings us to an era that can only be described as horrible. Can't wait to get into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you talking about? This is my childhood.
BEN KISSEL
I know. Do you remember your childhood?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And what do you think of it usually?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll tell you what, honestly I don't remember whole patches and years of it.
BEN KISSEL
That's fantastic. That's called compartmentalizing trauma. Okay everyone, today we are on to a conversation about a man who I'm quite excited to talk about. His name is Joel Rifkin. And we're gonna get into it.
MARCUS PARKS
Henry, is it agita or angina?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Angina.
MARCUS PARKS
Angina.
BEN KISSEL
Angina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Angina is that fat gut, your gut is pressing on your fucking guts, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that gives you angina?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's on the inside guts. So you got your top gut, the meat that surrounds the casing in your gut is actually pressing in on your inside guts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like an angina is a person who has a vagina so large that they don't have a taint.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Angina is chest pains.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh is that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Angina is chest pains and then agita is a lot of times they are together. Angina, agita, it's all things for guys whos wrists are so thick they could barely get a chain on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think one of the first gals I kissed in high school was named Agita.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Beautiful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that nice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again that's how you know this crime takes place in Long Island. We'll get into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
Joel Rifkin was an American serial killer who operated in New York City in the late 80s and early 90s. Over the course of four years, Joel murdered 17 women using a wide variety of methods and his disposal methods similarly changed from victim to victim. Sometimes Rifkin would dismember the bodies piece by piece and throw them in either the Hudson or the East River, other times the bodies would be dumped hole in steamer trunks or stuffed in oil barrels or even just left out in the open. In only one case Rifkin buried the body in a shallow grave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every single documentary, every piece of media about Joel Rifkin, and there's a significant amount-
BEN KISSEL
There's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Fair amount, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's mostly because Joel Rifkin, bumblebutt comes up quite a bit.
BEN KISSEL
Ed Kemper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a little similar to Ed Kemper. He loves the sound of his own voice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll talk about it but he's a yapper.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wait a second, you're talking about someone in 1989 from Queens talking too much?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He talks quite a bit.
BEN KISSEL
I can't believe it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is one of my dad's friends.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like not even an exaggeration, Bobby Franco is a guy that my father knew.
BEN KISSEL
Bobby Franco.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bobby Franco who was trying to get everybody to move to Pensacola, Florida.
BEN KISSEL
Well why wouldn't you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he said, 'That's the unheard of paradise in the tropics.'
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then his house got wiped away by god because he deserved it, nature came, the Gulf of Mexico reclaimed his home.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's always something to remember during natural disasters, that perhaps some of the homes that were destroyed were horrible people's.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's got a rat-like face. But there's a lot of material and Joel Rifkin, people have really studied him for a long time and quite extensively and there's a part of me that wonders why because he is kind of like the boilerplate serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he really is. As far as victim type went, Joel Rifkin preyed exclusively on sex workers plying their trade on the streets of New York City. As a result, Joel Rifkin is New York City's number one serial killer when it comes to body count.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Number one. Number one!
MARCUS PARKS
Or at least he's number one amongst those who have been caught.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I never sleep!
BEN KISSEL
You never sleep at all?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I do. Medically I need to sleep.
BEN KISSEL
You do, at least 8 hours a night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I'm just saying my hours are varied and long.
BEN KISSEL
I see. I guess the movie Maniac came out far before these murders but doesn't it remind you of Maniac?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That really creepy film, the original of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are some similarities.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See Rifkin was caught completely by chance like most serial killers are because the time and place in which Rifkin operated was on par with Vancouver during the reign of Robert Pickton in terms of opportunity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you!
BEN KISSEL
Oh you're not gonna want to dismember her that way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you! How dare you? No, no, no, no. This isn't time for Canada, all right?
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How dare you compare Queens to Vancouver?
BEN KISSEL
Queens is the Vancouver of America. Oh you're not gonna wanna do it that way. I've heard that in Queens as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Lower East Side.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely, yes. Henry you're trying to claim Queens is where this entire story happened, not even close. Not even close.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's the Lower East Side and Long Island which if you put them together is Queens. It's just New York City math.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see, that's an interesting color scheme.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Rifkin's hunting ground was New York City in the early 90s which was quite possibly the worst of the bad old days brought up so often by The New York Post when crime happens to spike even the tiniest bit here in the five boroughs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But don't worry, that's why you have your occupying army there now, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's awesome. They got net guns and robot dogs and missile launchers.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so we've really come a long way.
BEN KISSEL
Don't you feel safe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Do you guys imagine that those are patrolling the streets at all times? Because I've never seen any of that.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they did have the robot dog out there.
BEN KISSEL
It was out there once.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's way more assault rifles in the air in New York City way more than there is in California.
BEN KISSEL
You also live in a relatively safe area.
MARCUS PARKS
I do.
BEN KISSEL
I bet you people in different areas see more robot dogs. And the nice thing about the robot dog when they send him undercover to get drugs and they're like, 'Arf arf, I want some crack.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's like, 'Halt! Halt! You will be terminated. Bark, bark.'
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But no, when I used to live off the J train it was constant men with assault rifles everywhere.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, I remember.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Well specifically the bad old days during Joel Rifkin's spree were a result of the crack epidemic. And with crack came the highest murder rate in the history of New York City. In 1990 murders in New York City peaked at 2,262. For some perspective, the murder rate in New York City last year was 488, 78% lower, meaning our town has a long, long way to go before it returns to the so-called bad old days.
BEN KISSEL
Well you guys are well on your way and I think you're gonna get there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think you can get there.
BEN KISSEL
You can get there!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One day we will do a whole series on the idea of the birth of crack.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Fascinating. We covered it a little bit with our CIA MK Ultra somewhat, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But not really.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's a gigantic story that involves a lot of different people going all the way to the fucking top.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I was going to introduce some information about that but it's so intense.
BEN KISSEL
As a matter of fact Henry's digging in his pocket right now, look at that crack rock. Thank you so much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my lucky crack rock.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I'm sorry, you just rub that one?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is for openness. I have this one right next to here, this is my other crack rock which is for wish fulfillment and focus.
BEN KISSEL
You know what? Honestly if it was legalized it would be just like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of like they let New York get real, real bad and then dumped a bunch of drugs in it and then sort of used it as an example of why they would need an occupying army in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It almost kind of seems like it all was done in a purposeful way to rip apart the classes in a not so subtle way of putting down the poor and and rising up the rich.
BEN KISSEL
I think so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Let's see what happens.
MARCUS PARKS
That's about one of I would say 4-5 reasons why it was done, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a multifaceted octopus. I mean you want to talk about the octopus of fucking malice, that's the octopus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But we gotta do it though.
BEN KISSEL
Reason number three is just to have a good time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean crack is great. People love it.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very popular for a reason.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd say it's the Dane Cook of drugs.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. It definitely makes you act out.
MARCUS PARKS
Well regardless when a drug as addictive as crack is being purposefully funneled into American cities, you're gonna have people who will do anything to get more of it once the addiction takes hold. And when that situation arises, you're going to have a large increase in related crimes like murder, theft, assault, and high risk sex work. And since there was so much violent crime and so many murders and since you had cops like Henry's father making up a fair portion of the NYPD during this time period, the deaths and disappearances of sex workers didn't rank high on the NYPD priority list in the early 90s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know this is a pointed jab at my father.
BEN KISSEL
It's not a pointed jab. I mean it's not that complicated. I mean the nice thing about your father is when he's seeing double, he's like two cops.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is a man that became a cop in order to avoid being harassed by cops. And what I will say, the best thing about my father is that he took a desk job immediately.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as he could, he didn't want to be a bully, he just was a bully to his family and so he got that out of his system at home.
BEN KISSEL
Good, great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then at work he investigated deadly car accidents. So he was far away from all of the sex worker deaths being swiped under the rug.
BEN KISSEL
Very interesting backpedaling from Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. It's true. We could talk about your family history. We could talk about Marcus' family history.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We can talk about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah we've all got our ghosts, our skeletons.
BEN KISSEL
At least we're one generation removed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, I'm fixing it.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey, I'm like 5 generations removed. Don't look at me.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
People listening cannot see the knowing looks that you two just exchanged.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now despite how Joel Rifkin might be portrayed in certain recent true crime documentaries - Oxygen, I'm looking looking squarely at you - he was not some brilliant monster who was so clever and so smart that he was able to evade capture for almost five years, a so-called invisible man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every cop is obsessed with him being invisible.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Invincible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all say he's invisible, right. And every cop would talk like he had some superpower. It was like one dude who was like, 'This guy, he was invisible to law enforcement.'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah? You couldn't see him?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like an octopus. You know that?
BEN KISSEL
I can see an octopus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but it can change its skin. You'd fucking know that if you went to the zoo one time, you fucking moron.
BEN KISSEL
Why would it change its skin at the zoo?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it doesn't wanna be seen because it's shy.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Octopuses change! All I'm trying to say, octopuses change the color of their skin much like this guy. Surreptitious, he's like Aladdin stealing apples everywhere. Can't see him if I wanted to! His head is all bandaged up, he's got the goggles on.
BEN KISSEL
That's Dark Man or The Man Who Wasn't There.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Invisible.
BEN KISSEL
Invisible. All right, fantastic. I was just gonna say it's ironic that the network Oxygen usually talks about people who are losing oxygen as they get choked to death. Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that is ironic. You did use irony correctly in that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like 10,000 spoons, man.
BEN KISSEL
Don't you say that. You say it every time.
MARCUS PARKS
Well instead of Rifkin being the invisible man, he evaded capture because his victims were invisible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
New York City had no idea that a serial killer had murdered 17 women until The New York Post put a picture of Rifkin on the front page with a headline that read 'I Killed 17 Women'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well if you're just gonna go out and say it like that, I guess he musta.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez Louise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at this fucking guy, he's bragging about it. I thought he was some kind of invisible man, now he's out here being super fucking visible? I think he's a hypocrite.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, indeed. He's the John Cena of serial killers, you just can't see him.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in fact it would not be any sort of stretch to speculate that Rifkin could have reached Pickton level numbers, around 50, had he not been caught red handed in the dumbest most Mr. Magoo capture of a serial killer that I've ever heard.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
However to be absolutely fair, many of the women Joel killed were never even reported missing by anyone nor were some of their bodies found before Joel directed police to their location. For example, his first victim wasn't reported missing until after Joel Rifkin was caught. That was 5 years after her death and disappearance that someone finally got around to noticing Heidi ain't around no more.
BEN KISSEL
It's just an elongated version of Home Alone where they're counting the kids on the plane and then they're like, 'Kevin!' It's like how long does it take before you realize this woman is gone?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Joel Rifkin specifically targeted those that were at their most desperate ends of their life. I think what he a sensed was people that were already in his terms, and he even said that, he was like, 'They were going to be dead anyway.' And so in his mind he specifically went after the most skinny, the most obviously strung out on drugs, the most visibly sick, and he would use that.
BEN KISSEL
Preying on the weakest.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah the most weak, the most separated from any sort of source of comfort or security.
BEN KISSEL
This is why if I was going to be a serial killer and I killed sex workers, I would kill those Chippendale male dancers. They're gonna give you a good struggle, they're muscular, so you know when I kill them, I'm a real man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just wanna pay to wrestle a man.
BEN KISSEL
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can.
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
Even though no one cared about the people he killed before he was caught, New York City took notice after his capture. In the biggest example an entire episode of Seinfeld released just five months after Rifkin's capture revolves around Elaine dating a man named Joel Rifkin, which causes many amusing problems.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is amusing.
MARCUS PARKS
And that is also a rarely replayed episode by the way, you don't see that one on TBS very often.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's dark.
BEN KISSEL
I also love that episode because Kramer says at the very end, 'Okay guys, I'm gonna go do stand up comedy.' And then they're like, 'Good luck! Good luck, Kramer.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes!
BEN KISSEL
And Jerry's like, 'Don't steal my act.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Coming for you, Michael Richards.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. No Kramer, Michael Richards is dead. Kramer lives.
MARCUS PARKS
Interestingly as a sidebar, during the scene in that episode in which Elaine proposes a series of first names that her boyfriend could change to from Joel, she suggests as a safe bet the name OJ just six months before OJ murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What did they know?
BEN KISSEL
It's a show about nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What did they know? Who have they been talking to?
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
But while the sharing of the name in the Seinfeld episode has more to do with the fact that Joel Rifkin brutally murdered so many women, it would be equally embarrassing to share a name with Joel Rifkin, the human being who is probably one of the wormiest, whiniest, and most pathetic killers we've ever covered.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude. Every person at this table has been brutally bullied on some level or another, right.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this is the story of a person, as one early friend of Joel Rifkin puts, they called him an abuse unit.
BEN KISSEL
An abuse unit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was that he was the type of guy that not only was naturally bullied by anybody who ever met him because there's something about him, he was a walking target. But in the torturing of him, he became even more annoying that caused the cycle of abuse to continue.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, this came from a big buzz cutted mook from Long Island.
BEN KISSEL
He didn't have the moment where he stands up to the bullies and becomes a man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he does not. No. We had a kid like that in our school too. I know exactly. I don't justify it, I don't say that it's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
But I know what he was talking about. I'm no saint, there was one kid below me, I was second as far as the bully rungs go, I was second, there was one kid below me who I got to bully and then everybody bullied him as well. And he was also an asshole. That's the other thing about him.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's the thing about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone bullied him but he was also a massive dickhead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And isn't he on like your state legislature now or something?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I think he is. Yes. He's one of the people who want to do away with sodomy laws, or bring them back rather there in Texas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is kind of what he's like.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is like that, he's perennially a fucking pain in the ask that everybody hates.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Rifkin is one of those rare serial killers in league with BTK who had no extreme trauma in their childhood when it comes to parental or familial abuse. This again completely blows the mommy and daddy theory out of the water when it comes to looking at the causes of serial killing or at the very least it makes the study of the serial killing phenomenon less reductive. It's not as simple as they like to make it.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is a really interesting documentary, we talked with the woman that worked with him, it was the new documentary about BTK and it's fascinating.
MARCUS PARKS
You talked with Katherine Ramsland, it was a fantastic documentary series, I loved it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look, Katherine Ramsland has a way of putting it that I think is really interesting is that until she got that close, because they're very similar, until she got the close relationship with BTK, it wasn't fully revealed how deep and intense his fantasy life was and how early it started.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're going to see the same pattern and Joel Rifkin where I think that he didn't really want to talk about how deep and dark his fantasies were for so long.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Because they'd be solidified perhaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because even Joel Rifkin in his own mind is kind of like, 'I'm just some guy'. Meanwhile he's been thinking about torturing and murdering women since he was 4 years old.
BEN KISSEL
And you can listen to that episode on our Patreon, fantastic interview. And again thanks to everyone who gives to our Patreon. This is a great time to plug that. Just a great time to do it. Most kids do the 3, 2, 1 and they shoot the basketball into the hoop and they're like, 'I did the winning shot, I did the winning shot!' But apparently Joel Rifkin was like 3, 2, 1 and he was like, 'And I choke and I choke and I choke.' Interesting. Different childhoods.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Different childhood fantasies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every childhood is different.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every childhood is different. I wanted to be on stage.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, we know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Rifkin blames most of his serial killing on childhood bullies and society at large. And while he admittedly did have a rough go of it growing up when it came to bullying, he still chose to murder 17 women where people who have had it far worse have murdered exactly zero.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah look at Elon Musk.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, look at him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at him, he's doing great.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know if he was bullied.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know actually. Yeah, I think he had assassins as a little boy.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for our source today we've got an entertaining book called 'From the Mouth of the Monster' from a former cop named Robert Mladinich who briefly knew Joel Rifkin in the late 70s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. You mean brief? every friendship is sacred and for some reason I remember every single moment of our friendship in a way that I would write into a book that I would sell That would be a very big documentary series for me as well.
BEN KISSEL
You're Officer Mladinich?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Officer Mladinich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know if you can't say you're drunk. So you got to jail.
BEN KISSEL
Goddamn. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
I might be saying it wrong but I think it's Robbie Mladinich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mladinich.
MARCUS PARKS
Mladinich. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Something like that.
MARCUS PARKS
But as a result of their short friendship, Mladinich was able to extensively speak to Joel Rifkin himself, meaning there's not a lot of guesswork when it comes to murder and disposal methods. However as it always is with the last living witness, it's important to take Rifkin's claims and especially his observations about himself with a grain of salt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I always love a serial killer's version of themselves.
BEN KISSEL
It's so funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you can tell a lot about them, what they think about their own crimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
See if I were to compare Rifkin's interviews with Mladinich to anyone, they share quite a bit in common and tone with as Henry said Ed Kemper's disturbingly detached sessions with FBI profilers. But where Kemper comes off as somewhat academic, even highfalutin, Rifkin sounds more like a Long Island regular joe who talks about his murders with all the emotion and self reflection of a guy who's recounting the last time he mowed his lawn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You tell me people don't take that super seriously in Long Island? People will cry if they get a perfect mow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All I know is if I'm even an inch off with my HOA, this one time they came around, they grabbed my mother and they put her head in a fucking plastic bag.
BEN KISSEL
That's what I'm saying!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I was just like whoa, whoa, whoa, can't we talk about this? Can't we talk about this? And they're like, 'If this grass doesn't come at half an inch, the fucking bitch dies.'
BEN KISSEL
She dies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I was like fair, because I read the rules.
BEN KISSEL
Of course it's fair. You did real the rules.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But honestly just fucking kill her. Just fucking kill her.
BEN KISSEL
Just mow the lawn please, sir.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I can't get to it til Tuesday.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing, when you describe this I have such a clear memory of the day that me and Carolina drove down to Amityville to go check out the DeFeo house and that neighborhood is this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I can just imagine that, that just Long Island neighborhood. All these guys are all there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the same fucking shmool, every guy. God, this documentary was so triggering to me, I've watched so many of these. I just remember being uncomfortably at the police station while my father and all of them were doing shots and I'm playing the Donkey Kong game and it's just like, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning sources I also have to note that some of the stories that Mladinich told in his book differ wildly from how he later told the same stories in the aforementioned Oxygen documentary. Now it could be that he obtained new information after the publication of his book that brought these stories into sharper focus but considering how the editing in that doc was very choppy and obviously done for time, I think that Mladinich was more likely directed to shorten or sweeten his stories by a producer. And considering how shoddy one part true crime deep TV documentaries can be with facts and timelines, we're going to go with what Mladinich wrote in the first place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marcus!
BEN KISSEL
Okay, hear me out now. It's not lying. We're trying to make a good show here!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Editing.
BEN KISSEL
It's editing. Make a good show here.
MARCUS PARKS
It's one of the worst edited true crime documentaries I've ever seen. It's fucking nuts. It's like watching an episode of 90 Day Fiance when the glasses of beer go from full to empty to full to empty over the course of one conversation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) She found her man and now she's taken. I'm sorry I was doing like a stinger from 90 Day Fiance, they always do those horrible stingers. But I do appreciate any documentary where they let the serial killer run his mouth because I like to see the way they recount the information.
BEN KISSEL
60 Day Fiance. There you go, you fucking assholes. I just made your next great show. 59 Day Fiance!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man. That's one day less than 60.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is and that's really going to turn up the pressure.
BEN KISSEL
It really will.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
4 Day Fiance. Welcome to 4 Day Fiance, you got a fucking venue yet? Should have started a year ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Can you imagine how those two assholes from South Dakota would handle things if they only had 60 days instead of 90? I don't think Space Cash would have a hell of a whole lot to say and wouldn't be doing a very good job if they did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Poor, poor Space Cash man. He's fucked. That pink, pink cowboy is fucked.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
So without further ado-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I sound like my father.
MARCUS PARKS
No, Space Cash is his bandmate, I think Jibri is the man who dresses like a 6 year old girl.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic, fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Margot Robbie from the Barbie Movie.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
That was Carolina's observation, Jibri dresses like a little girl.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic, I love that show.
MARCUS PARKS
So without further ado, let's get into the story of Joel Rifkin, starting with his childhood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Wayne's World flashback sound) (singing) Hey how you doing? Come on down to Queens, enjoy your life here. You can get a whole six yards of stoop.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, six yards of stoop. Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Joel Rifkin was adopted by Jeanne and Bernard Rifkin in 1958 who found Joel through a service that places Jewish children with Jewish families.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
This fact is interesting because it makes Joel Rifkin the only known truly Jewish serial killer outside of Harvey Glatman who murdered four women in the 50s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Glatman! Glatman!
BEN KISSEL
What about Berkowitz?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Berkowitz, we never knew. We don't really know.
MARCUS PARKS
No, we do know. People always put up Berkowitz as an example of a Jewish serial killer but he was not Jewish. Remember his real name was like Dick Falco.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Richard Falco.
BEN KISSEL
Oh indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. It's important to note that while both Rifkin and Berkowitz were adopted, Berkowitz was not as I put it oh so long ago a mother vagina Jew.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mother vagina Jew means you get the card when you leave.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the thing is that when you leave the hospital you get the 'You're Jewish' card.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay. The driver's license.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Rifkin, just wanna say mazel tov.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did it.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, good job buddy. He's the Sandy Koufax of serial killers.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning Rifkin's adopted parents, they seem by all accounts to be perfectly normal, loving people with perfectly conventional lives who adopted not just Joel but a girl named Jan two years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's their biggest crime.
MARCUS PARKS
What, adopting Jan?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Joel and Jan.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, Joel and Jan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the two J names.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Gets confusing after a while.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well originally the Rifkin's lived in Rockland County just north of New York City but just after Joel turned five, his father, an architect, got a new job which necessitated a move to East Meadow outside of Hempstead on Long Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes baby!
BEN KISSEL
Long Island's a fine place!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Franklin Square, dude.
BEN KISSEL
I love Franklin Square.
MARCUS PARKS
This Joel claimed was the moment that his life fell apart. Where in Rockland he had friends in a beautiful wooded area for exploration, and it is beautiful up there, Long island was a land of cruel bullies and unfair treatment.
BEN KISSEL
Wait a second, he was fucking five years old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna talk about this.
MARCUS PARKS
We're gonna get into it.
BEN KISSEL
What four year old is like, 'I got the gang with me.' Four year olds don't give a shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is such a little bitch that he talks about, he was like, 'Those were the good days back before I could think.'
BEN KISSEL
You were 4 and half years old!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Before I could experience anything, that's when things were nice.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as I had all these things like society and other people and anything but my parents, that's when things were bad.
BEN KISSEL
You were six! Oh poor you.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean yeah, basically when Joel's life wasn't absolutely perfect in every single way, he would bring it back again and again in his interviews as one of the many reasons why he became a serial killer and he used everything and everyone except himself as an excuse for his actions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is not an exaggeration. Every single inconvenience, truly just an inconvenience that he had growing up, he has labeled as another reason why he's a serial killer.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everything. He's just such a wormy little fuck that he could have done anything in his life, he could have done anything.
BEN KISSEL
To steal another Seinfeld quote, "Fra-gee-ly".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's from A Christmas Story.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's from A Christmas Story.
MARCUS PARKS
And also you didn't say it right, I think it's 'fra-gee-lay'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fra-gee-lay.
BEN KISSEL
Frag-i-lay?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it must be Italian. That's egregious. Egregious mistake.
BEN KISSEL
Egregious?
MARCUS PARKS
Well for example of a mountain being made out of a molehill, when Joel arrived in Long Island he missed the cut off for kindergarten. So by the time he began school, he was a year older than everyone else which is somehow a tragedy from which there was no return.
BEN KISSEL
No, you get to bump them on your head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I was set up and set back by conspiratorial powers beyond my control.
BEN KISSEL
That was just paperwork man, we just didn't get it in on time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have been gained since day one to fail.
BEN KISSEL
Also my mother didn't put me into kindergarten until I was like seven because she just wanted to hang out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and she breastfed you until you were like 15.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's untrue. That's a non truth. See I told the truth and then you told a non truth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're fighting so hard. It sounds like it's true. The harder you fight, the more true it sounds.
BEN KISSEL
It just doesn't matter, I got to skip fifth grade because of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Breastfeeding?
BEN KISSEL
No because I went to kindergarten late.
MARCUS PARKS
But did that take into account all of the times your mother took you out of school because she thought the apocalypse was coming?
BEN KISSEL
Great thing about Catholic school is you pay to go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So they're just like, I mean literally mom, you fucking pay these people. It doesn't matter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Now to be fair, Joel was bullied from the time he moved to Long Island until he graduated high school. And considering some of the interactions I've had with certain strong Islanders over the last 15 or so years I've lived in this area, I'd imagine it was particularly cruel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They can be.
BEN KISSEL
At some point you wake up and you say today's the day and then you confront the bully and then you become part of the bully blob and then it goes downhill. But he didn't do it. That's part of maturing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every once in a while the bully group is correct. And it's very rare.
BEN KISSEL
It's very rare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Truly it's very rare.
BEN KISSEL
Very rare.
MARCUS PARKS
You still shouldn't bully the weird kid no matter how annoying he may be. You shouldn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No because you know why? Because sometimes he can turn around and fucking kill everybody.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So actually these days you kind of have to be like, 'Hey, how you doing weirdo?' You can still call them weirdo, you can be like, 'Hey, you're fucking weird, right? You want a soda? Hey, you know, let's go, let's drive him once around in our cool car so he can feel it. Choose the song, weirdo. It's your day! I won't learn your name, I don't want to know your name.'
BEN KISSEL
No. Name's Weirdo Sullivan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they named you Weirdo.
BEN KISSEL
I thought you knew.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna drop you off here, have a good one.
BEN KISSEL
Nutso? Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna give you five stars on Yelp.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
But conversely being bullied doesn't justify murder or really any negative behavior that comes as a result of the trauma that all three of us still bitterly harbor. Now Joel believed that because he was immediately targeted by the class bully, he became a target for all bullies from then on because according to him, if you wanted to establish your reputation as a tough guy, your first step was to go beat up little Joely Rifkin, almost as if he was the Glass Joe of his elementary school,
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whiny voice) You can't be me, come on. Can't be me.
BEN KISSEL
That's just round one on Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!. I actually disagree with the bullies here, you got to go one step up. You can't just pick on the little guy all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Joel Rifkin is incorrect. That's what I think. I think that he immediately decided this woe is me, I'm at the bottom of the pack and you all put me here.
BEN KISSEL
Well I think the optimal word is he decided, didn't he?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
BEN KISSEL
You know what? This guy would have loved Jordan Peterson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think he would have been Jordan Peterson's assistant.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. All I do is eat red meat. You look like a fucking ghoul.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Joel also believed that his intense feelings of inadequacy came because he failed his adopted father in his athletic abilities. See Joel's father was a former collegiate football player but Joel said that when he was a kid, he had as much of a chance of catching the ball with his face as he did his hands.
BEN KISSEL
Who cares?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again I was not athletic either.
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't matter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My father watched me with my mother's dress around my head on the treadmill singing the phantom songs and yeah sure, he was disappointed.
BEN KISSEL
That's kind of athletic though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he didn't see it quite like that. But my father wasn't athletic either.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it wasn't a lot of pressure. It was just more just like, 'I guess he fucking reads'. It was more of that vibe, 'I guess as what he does'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah I mean I could see Joel Rifkin's adopted father trying to throw the football to his son and his son's just not getting it. And his father just sits there with his hands on his hips, looking at the ground, shaking his head, just saying, 'Jesus fucking Christ.'
BEN KISSEL
Everyone has their thing though. I know someone in my personal family, my grandfather did not want any of his kids to play sports because he hated football because he thought it was too dangerous. So that was the whole thing where it was like I wasn't allowed to play sports, I was forced to play sports, there's no right answer here. Do not kill 17 women.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the right answer. But again, Joel's adopted father was a man's man but he was the opposite of John Wayne Gacy's father.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where he didn't zero in on his problems, he didn't start to attack his own son the way John Wayne Gacy's father did but he definitely just didn't know what to do with him.
MARCUS PARKS
He's frustrated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was deeply, deeply frustrated and he was a pillar of his community, he made a lot of money, he was successful, college educated, he was respected amongst the community.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then your son is Joel Rifkin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's just that. It's not like it's not like he became Joel Rifkin, he didn't become the character of Joel Rifkin. It's like he flopped out the pussy Joel Rifkin and then that's your son.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Here's your son.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, his dad would try to show him how to do math problems, the kid couldn't get it.
BEN KISSEL
I used to openly weep during the math problems.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was also bad.
BEN KISSEL
And now I have this little fucking machine right here in my hand that can do all the math problems for me, teacher that lied to me. I had a teacher who taught typewriting class saying computers were going to go out of style. Bitch, you lied to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Triggered.
BEN KISSEL
I am triggered now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Deeply triggered. But yes, I do remember when a high school teacher did tell me, 'Well it's not like you're going to walk around every day with a calculator in your pocket.'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. I'm gonna go kill 17 goddamn...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's gone now.
MARCUS PARKS
Well whenever Joel would try to play sports with the other kids, and this is according to Joel's mother, the other kids wouldn't let him join in. So Joel would retreat upstairs and watch them from his window where he became isolated and weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) And I don't want the world to see me cause I don't think that they'd understand.
BEN KISSEL
These guys. You know Rudolph became the leader at some point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) When everything's meant to be broken...
BEN KISSEL
How many people?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's horrible what happened to him.
BEN KISSEL
It's horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's horrible the way they taunted him. Again this is how you know this crime happened in Long Island because (Long Island accent) It's haw-rible.
BEN KISSEL
Goo Goo Doll indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Wasn't that the song that you would sing to yourself when the girls didn't talk to you, Henry?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. They didn't understand that one day they would see my value.
BEN KISSEL
(singing) Clearly I remember picking on the boy! Seemed a harmless little fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Joel's childhood nickname was Turtle.
BEN KISSEL
That's not bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Entourage!
MARCUS PARKS
He was always a little slow when it came to everything.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but Turtle?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's not bad.
BEN KISSEL
That's not bad.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not bad at all.
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
With Joel, even though he did have a supposedly high IQ, about the only things that made sense were horticulture and photography. They were both things that he learned from his mother.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Those are two very interesting, intricate things.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That being said, even in childhood Joel claimed to have frequent violent fantasies. By the time he reached junior high, his most frequent fantasy was a reenactment of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Frenzy'. In that particular scene, a woman is strangled with a necktie after she refuses the advances of a man. And Joel said that he felt a particular joy in watching the look of fear and desperation in the eyes of the victim as the killer finished the job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that his fantasy life began very, very early and this comes up several times in his interviews, he talks about Frenzy still.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it left an indelible mark and he never stopped and it just ramped up immediately as soon as he started thinking like this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But he just didn't separate the fact that that's a movie and not real life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's just that they say that these these fantasies aren't created by movies or video games or TV shows or anything like that.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
It's just that when seeing it onscreen it solidified the fantasies that he already had. He was already having these fantasies, he's already thinking about it, it's just now he kind of has a go to. It's like how you can always picture people in your head having sex but it's always better to just watch pornography.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it can be. And then Tiger Woods, he didn't know he was gonna be a star golfer until his father taped that putter into his hands.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he saw oh, I'm a star golfer.
BEN KISSEL
Tiger dad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now it could very well be that having constant violent fantasies rolling around in his head might have made Joel Rifkin a weird hang because people can sometimes pick up on shit like that. But even outside of Joel's inner world, he made decisions in high school that must have been like fucking catnip to his Long Island bullies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It just gets to a point like are you doing these things on purpose? Is it just about getting any attention that you can get?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That is something that was said about Joel many times, that he was all about getting attention, didn't matter if it was negative attention or positive attention. It's just all about attention at all times.
BEN KISSEL
That's what I used to do. That's why I shorted out the entire computer lab with one of those little paper clips.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but that's fun, it's pranks.
BEN KISSEL
It was pranks but people were working on their homework and then they were like, 'I lost my homework!' And I was like why are you doing homework? And it really aggravated a lot of people. But then it was a split 50/50 down the line, a lot of people laughed and then the people who are really trying to work hard at school were not happy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's weird. It seems to be almost a mirror of his professional life.
BEN KISSEL
Hey man, whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
When Joel's backpack fell apart when he was in high school, he became the kid who brought a suitcase to school.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's not that bad either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just Long Island. It's hard to describe.
BEN KISSEL
I actually think in Long Island it fits in more than it would in Wisconsin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel, no. You honestly truly don't understand. There's something about an eastern coast school, there's something about that time period too. Because my bullies were like that too. It's just any single thing that set you off socially in any way, shape, or form that allowed you to stand out at all, they would just hammer you for it. And he knew that, you knew the rules at some point. You knew to not show up with your fun new stupid nerd thing because then you just get the shit beat outta you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's just still, it's not that bad, it's not that weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Also with the bully thing in Long Island, it's a hyper masculinity thing. It's like everyone's trying to one up each other as far as who can be the most masculine, who can be the biggest asshole, who can be the fucking strongest dog.
BEN KISSEL
All right. I don't know what's not masculine about a briefcase but that's all I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Rifkin then tried taking up violin which also got him bullied.
BEN KISSEL
Now you're gonna get bullied.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I was told I was too fat to play violin.
BEN KISSEL
Wait what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The music teacher said like, 'You're too fat, your neck fat spreads all over the frets.'
BEN KISSEL
And look at you now! You haven't killed anybody that we know of.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've never once such an instrument ever since.
BEN KISSEL
That's fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
And when Joel ill advisedly ran for student body president, he lamented that he only got 20 votes. But that in my opinion, that ain't bad at all for the school abuse unit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's great!
MARCUS PARKS
It really ain't bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
He had 20 people say yes, we want you to be our leader, Joel Rifkin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those are joke votes though.
BEN KISSEL
Who gives a shit? That's what happened with Trump!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know but that's the problem. It is the problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Well from there Joel tried joining the track team thinking that joining would automatically give him a sort of gang that might protect him. Instead the track team started bullying him, giving him swirlies, they'd stuff things in his mouth, they stuffed underwear in his mouth, they stuffed a dead chicken in his mouth once.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I had the dime drill. I did got some horrible treatment.
MARCUS PARKS
The trophy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but it was also just because he was bad at running.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's kind of what I was wondering because he doesn't seem very tall, he doesn't seem like a marathoner.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, the track team, you can always throw a kid on the 800 or the mile and it's going to take him a really long time to run the mile and then if he finishes, he gets the pity claps at the end like the last kid used to always get.
BEN KISSEL
That's great, those are also claps. You guys aren't understanding those are real claps, those are real votes. Those are real reactions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel for President.
BEN KISSEL
You're soliciting real human reactions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well a part of it is he knows that he's deeply unpopular.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the fact that he would go and then run for president on the troll ticket, literally that's what he did. So he's leaning in.
BEN KISSEL
Vote for Joel, he's the troll. That's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again he wasn't as good as that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Eventually Joel did manage to get a girlfriend and in fact Joel never seemed to have a problem getting a girlfriend, no matter how weird he got. But when the track team found out about Joel's new relationship, they did their best to ruin it. See Joel had a job at the library and one day when the track team knew that his girlfriend was meeting him at work, they waited for him outside with eggs and cans of shaving cream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is so New York, that is so specifically New York because I had that happen to me multiple times where they would threaten, they'd freeze the eggs, right, so they'd be like rocks.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's actually better.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's rough. But again unfortunately you got to walk out and take it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what the game is. You got to walk out and Che Guevara that shit.
BEN KISSEL
You really do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta take it in the face.
BEN KISSEL
You really do.
MARCUS PARKS
When Joel exited the building, they pelted him with eggs and covered him in cream. And his new girlfriend just sat back and laughed which was the end of that particular romance.
BEN KISSEL
I mean it's quite humorous. It's the definition of comedy having somebody smash an egg on your head. It's a social media meme now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but at this point she was already in on the game and then he called his father to come pick him up.
BEN KISSEL
What else are you gonna do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It didn't help him.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, Mladinich told it two different ways. In one way he got covered in eggs and cream and that was that. And then the other version-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His father came and scooped him.
MARCUS PARKS
He just looked and saw that they were waiting for him and so he called up his dad and he came and picked him up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I bet you the latter happened. I can see the latter happening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can see him just staying inside and waiting until his father came and picked him up.
BEN KISSEL
That's what I would do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then your father, Jesus Christ, he's gotta walk through the line of kids with the eggs and shaving cream. He's like, 'You guys gonna shaving cream and egg my son? That's kind of funny. Lemme go get him.'
BEN KISSEL
His father could have stood up for him a little bit there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh he did multiple times.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah he really did. No, his mother would go, he would go and talk to other parents and talk to other kids and say like, 'Just fucking give him a break, come on man, give him a fucking break.' And no one ever would.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A group of kids did the thing that they did to me where they pulled his pants down and laughed at his penis and then he was going to go tell the school but then Joel's father was like, 'I'll handle it' and went to go talk to all the parents and kids. Because he also was a big man so he'd threaten them.
BEN KISSEL
And then Joel went to all of the kids and he pulled down all of their pants and he looked at their penises and then he did have to serve some time. But the message was given though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well the final straw when it came to the track team was when Joel admitted during a game of Truth or Dare that he liked a particular girl. You don't never do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't give 'em nothing. Don't give them anything!
BEN KISSEL
He didn't know!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes he did! Because he was actively being tortured by them. They were already doing it.
BEN KISSEL
He must've been excited to be part of the game.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing is that at one point you have to drop out, that's what I realized around like 6th/7th grade, that's when I realized when my friends turned into bullies after about a year or two of that, I realized I just gotta drop out, man. I gotta not have any friends, I gotta be a fucking loner. I gotta drop out, I gotta not give 'em anything, I gotta avoid them. You gotta drop out completely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You turned that into serial killer training school which is what Mladinich says was that, 'He spent so long figuring out how to evade all the bullies, he became invisible. He trained. Every single moment of his life he knew when someone was coming, he could hear the footsteps, he knew how to avoid it and slip through the cracks like a bat.'
MARCUS PARKS
Officer Mladinich, is it possible you just weren't looking for him because you didn't care about sex workers?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Invisible.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, just wondering.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, this whole invisible thing certainly didn't help him from getting scammed by sex workers for fucking years upon years upon years. No, he was not invisible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did it on purpose too. We'll get into that cause he did that on purpose as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after Joel admitted to liking a particular girl, he was shoved into the girls locker room and got pinned against the wall by a shotputter while another kid wrote Joel's name and unspecified sexual phrases on the girl's locker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like butt.
BEN KISSEL
What words?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And ass.
BEN KISSEL
What if she was like, 'Oh my god, Joel does love me.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Because she didn't know that he had a crush on her. So then he went into the Yellow Pages, found her number, preemptively called her, told her, 'Hey, I have a crush on you and these men, they went over there and they wrote butt and ass on your locker.' And the whole time she's like, 'Why are you calling me? Who are you, first of all? I barely know you in the hallways. How'd you get my number?'
BEN KISSEL
The phone book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now she's creeped out, now she's bullying him because she's just like, 'You just need to just not loop me in.'
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And after that incident Joel did fight back just a little bit by pushing a boy into a locker and threatening further violence, just a tiny little bit.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Here we go.
MARCUS PARKS
But even though nothing further happened in reality, Joel's violent fantasies were only getting stronger and more elaborate as they often do with serial killers during late adolescence, which is why you should always talk about it before it gets out of hand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just tell somebody! Even if it gets you into a square for a while, just tell somebody and get it out of the way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Hopefully it doesn't get you into a square there. This is the definition of like, (muttering) 'I'm gonna kill you all, I'm gonna kill every one of you motherfuckers.' What was that, Joel?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean I do that all day but I do that in the comfort of my home.
BEN KISSEL
Well absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Rifkin would fantasize about making sex slaves out of women, all while he threw darts at their bodies or shot them full of arrows. He had a piercing fetish. In other fantasies he'd make women fight each other to the death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The way he talked about it though, Mladinich was like, 'So in your fantasies, these women, are they always fighting to the death?' And he's just like, 'No, sometimes they'd fight like it was a competition, one would pin the other, it was something like that. They wouldn't always kill each other but sometimes they would.' Just the way he would talk about this shit.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like the early 90s UFC fights they used to have, although I don't think women were fighting at that point, but now they are and they'll kick your fucking ass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, they will.
MARCUS PARKS
Strangely though Joel said that no one ever screamed in his fantasies, even when they involved the student athletes that made his life a living hell. Instead his imagined victims would always take the punishment passively which I think further establishes the fact that Joel saw other people as nothing more than objects.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely. He could not, he can't see personality in 3D.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after graduating high school, Joel decided that he didn't want to go to college as a virgin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he has this weird Animal House version of sexuality.
BEN KISSEL
But that was fairly common. I think that's still a very common trope.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
I suppose so. But it's like he believes he lives in Porky's but not really. It's a bizarre version.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Another part of his wrestling fantasy was he's like, 'Because my problem was is that...' This is true, this is from his interview, he's like, 'My parents didn't really explain to me how the birds and the bees work. So like you'd say that they were like fucking each other death. My problem was that I didn't know how sex worked. So mostly I just kind of imagined them rubbing each other and just kind of figuring out because I thought that you peed inside the woman.'
BEN KISSEL
Oh actually there was a kid in sixth grade that asked that question during sex ed and then of course obviously the answer was no, unless you're trying to have a real wild time there but that's not how you get someone pregnant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, that's how you have Jared Kushner.
BEN KISSEL
So you're expecting his parents to well just before they have sex with each other be like, 'Joel, come in here.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now look, you know your father is a very important man. Your father is actually a very well established man in the neighborhood. So that's why I feel I'm the most qualified to show you how to fuck your mother.
BEN KISSEL
So you see here, my legs are like this Joel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What we do is that I get on my back and stick up my legs and I get super hard. Your mother, she inserts my penis in her vagina but she then backs her hips behind my ass. So it's kind of like she's fucking me.
BEN KISSEL
Get it?
MARCUS PARKS
Get it.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Well since he had little chance of going about it in the conventional way, Joel began his lifelong habit of visiting sex workers picked up off the street at 20-30 bucks a pop. Now at first Joel's pickups were relatively harmless in that he participated in a transaction of sex for money that any two consenting adults should be allowed to participate in. But eventually Joel became addicted to sex workers to the point where it was akin to an obsessive hobby that took up to four hours each night when he went to troll the streets of sometimes Brooklyn and Queens but mostly Manhattan.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The way he posited it was that he said that he was 'addicted to the night' and that's how he started. This is what he said, he's like, 'There's something about the movements, you got the headlights and it's squish, squish, squish. That's when there's things on the ground and you're walking.'
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you hear the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, it's the rain (whooshing sounds).
BEN KISSEL
It's nighttime, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nighttime and it's so dark and you're just like, 'Why am I wearing sunglasses? I can't even see anything.'
BEN KISSEL
Well your future's not very bright.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a funny guy.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when Joel went out, he would pick up a woman, interview her, then decide whether or not he wanted to go forth with the transaction. This according to Joel was standard practice in the street sex work game, which sounds much more complicated in reality than the quick pick up/drop off scenario that we've come to think of it as.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he would also get involved with their lives, which is true.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is probably good and bad because he would insinuate himself in their lives and then he really did show up all the time and became a known quantity in various, I don't know if we even use the term red light districts, I don't even think that's what the term was. I'm so poisoned by true crime documentaries this week because it's all just like, 'And he decided to go down to the hooker realm.' I heard the word hooker so many times in the last week if I took a shot every time I heard the word, I'd be dead.
BEN KISSEL
So he's like downtown Manhattan before it was all Disneyfied and all that stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean the East Village is a big pickup point for him, like Allen Street near the bottom of the Williamsburg Bridge, like Lower East Side. He's going to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, probably around like the Crown Heights area.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And he probably went to Long Island City fairly often because Long Island City used to be a big, big pickup point for street sex workers. I think the bridge there.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But yeah, he knows all the spots. But a lot of it is Lower East Side and East Village.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he is a template. It's so weird, it's to the fucking minute almost between Gary Ridgway and Robert Pickton, they are very, very similar.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Was Kuklinski working at the same time in that area or was he before?
MARCUS PARKS
No, Kuklinski was more like Graham Avenue, right? In Brooklyn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Brooklyn and then Jersey.
BEN KISSEL
Well I thought he killed that random person in the Lower East Side.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did.
MARCUS PARKS
No, that was near Battery Park, that was on the west side.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he was in Jersey and Pennsylvania.
BEN KISSEL
Either way there was a lot going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's the thing about what I said at the very beginning of the episode, he's got the most kills of anyone that we know of. Because what we do know, we've talked about it many times in the past, brought it up many times in the past is that in the 90s in south central LA, they think that there were no less than five serial killers operating at the same time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's no way.
MARCUS PARKS
And none of them were ever caught.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
And so with 2000 murders in New York City...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, there's no way there's not multiple serial killers operating in the area at the same time.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's just 2000 murders because remember a lot of Rifkin's victims were never identified and they never would have been counted had Rifkin not led police to the bodies or had he not just said like, 'Yeah, I dumped her in the river. Who knows where the fuck she is now?'
BEN KISSEL
Like that Richard Marx song.
MARCUS PARKS
Sunglasses At Night?
BEN KISSEL
No, I swear I left her by the river. (singing) I swear I left her by the river. And I'm mighty proud of that ragged old flag.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate the songs that Kissel knows. All the songs that Kissel knows are all about death.
BEN KISSEL
No they're not!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's death and then the flag.
BEN KISSEL
And the flag, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh and Little Toes.
BEN KISSEL
(singing) Little toes, little toes, big old butt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it, that's all he knows.
BEN KISSEL
I actually forgot that, I forgot the lyrics to that one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't even remember that one bit he did.
BEN KISSEL
Big old butt and little toes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when sex work was brought down to its most basic function, Joel said that it's like an assembly line where the deed can be done within two or three minutes once he decided on a girl.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
For him this transaction was the perfect situation considering how awkward he was in conventional social situations.
BEN KISSEL
Two to three minutes?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That must have even been awkward for the sex worker.
BEN KISSEL
You could make a hot pocket faster. Or slower.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He literally would just get them in the car and then just open up his pants and come immediately.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was once he's decided on a girl because he would talk to 'em for a long time, he would interview them. Sometimes he'd hang out with them all day long.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He liked them. I get it though, I get the idea of liking, I understand that like.
BEN KISSEL
No that's fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He viewed himself, he said he was lost to the city. That he would "throw himself onto the mercy of the streets" quote unquote, that was his thing where he'd go out there and see what would happen and he'd mix it up. Because we'll talk about how little his life was in his quote unquote "normal life". There he was a known quantity.
BEN KISSEL
It just feels like it's the Kentucky Derby with this guy. It's all talk, all talk and then the fucking race is 90 seconds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You sound like an old woman at the bar, you sound like a nurse.
BEN KISSEL
Dude these MILFs and GILFs out there are the horniest women you'll ever meet in your life. And I'll tell you one thing, if you talk to them for two hours, they're expecting four hours of hardcore banging. They're two and half minutes? They'll kill your ass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean the more that Joel Rifkin looked at sex work as an assembly line, the less he looked at sex workers as actual human beings. And over the course of many years they became in essence disposable objects in every way. It's like how some people treat wait staff like shit because they don't see them as people.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For him it was the expression of an urge and it was never about them. It was all about him, just the naughtiness of doing the transaction. But once that began to grow stale, he had to amp up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now after high school Joel attended SUNY Brockport, nicknamed SUNY Jockport because it produced a high number of physical education degrees.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's gonna be a great place for him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's the worst fucking choice he could make considering his history getting bullied by the more athletic kids, the worst fucking choice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was surrounded by gym teachers.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. He needed to go to Pratt, I think we can all agree. He needed to go to Pratt.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ben you might be interested to know that SUNY Brockport was actually the alma mater of both Bill and Jeff Van Gundy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I love Jeff Van Gundy, that is fantastic. Of course one of the greatest coaches the Knicks ever had. He's no Pat Riley but certainly a Pat Riley acolyte and he did try to take down Alonzo Mourning but he did lose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nobody cares.
BEN KISSEL
Jeff Van Gundy, one of the greatest commentators in the NBA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See his eyes light up.
MARCUS PARKS
I care because that's why I brought it up, I wanted to give him that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How do you reach these kids?
BEN KISSEL
These kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you look at him and you were like, I actually felt like I was Kissel's elementary school teacher or something where you drew two circles on the board and he's like, 'Circles are kinda like boobies.'
BEN KISSEL
Like boobies!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're like, 'You're right. Benjamin, you've made a connection.'
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely, you know I did. Yeah, Jeff Van Gundy, fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's how we teach him geometry.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
But even when Joel managed to somehow attract a live-in girlfriend during his early college years, he still visited sex workers as often as he could and spent money he didn't have to feed his addiction. As he put it, he'd get paid on Friday and by Monday he'd be asking to borrow money for gas.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see, he didn't unfurl an IOU being like that's as good as money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's as good as money. No, he was addicted to this. And I see a lot of this in the series I watch on YouTube, Soft White Underbelly, there's a lot of that, this idea of whatever money you have, you spend it fucking immediately on all of your vices and you blow it out until you have nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That gives me so much anxiety just thinking about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very scary.
MARCUS PARKS
In a specific example, Joel and his girlfriend got into a fight because Joel spent $16 on an old photo of Teddy Roosevelt at an antiques expo.
BEN KISSEL
That's kind of a cool photo.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a very cool photo, yeah. And his girlfriend flipped out because they were having a hard time even making rent. If you can't make rent, you don't have the disposable income for old photos of fucking Teddy Roosevelt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The president. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just don't, it's not in the budget this month.
BEN KISSEL
Almost like $100 for that time period. Yeah, it's a little much.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a bit much. But yeah, around 50 bucks, yeah. What his girlfriend didn't know though was that they weren't able to make rent because Joel was spending all his money on come and he'd spent $50 just the week before on girls. And about this Joel later remarked, quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"If she knew I blew 50 when she's a banshee about $16, you know, whoa."
BEN KISSEL
Well I don't think it would be about the money then Joel, I think it would be all the women you're having sex with that aren't your girlfriend, unless you have a relationship deal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hear a big ugly man flapping his gums.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I don't see a man who's not like me, an avenger of the night.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm in the night, I'm on the curb, I go to the bodega.
BEN KISSEL
It's just the night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They got water there.
BEN KISSEL
But you have nothing to do with it, it's just the night, you happen to be out in the night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
During the day it's blue, sure. But in the night it's black.
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't make you any cooler but okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honk honk, that's a car, make a car sound.
BEN KISSEL
Honk honk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, that's my noise now. I'm of the night.
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honk honk.
BEN KISSEL
You don't take my honk honk.
MARCUS PARKS
That really does tell you a lot about him though is that it doesn't register that his girlfriend would be more upset about him having sex with other women, all that registers is she yelled at me about buying this stupid photo so she would be more mad about me spending money than she would be about having sex without a condom.
BEN KISSEL
I'm actually a little bit surprised he didn't blow his cover being like $16 for this? You should see how much money I spent on these women! You'd be really upset. Because he didn't seem to know that she would be mad about that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because he's invisible.
BEN KISSEL
His mustache is not invisible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the truth is that he was separating his life. That was a different dude to him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You see this from now on, that was all being done by somebody else that he was sort of watching from afar and away.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Right, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But because Joel was visiting sex workers picked up from the street and having unsafe sex so often, he started developing a wide array of sexually transmitted diseases. Eventually he had dime and nickel-sized lesions on the back of his throat which caused drooling and 104 degree temperature. This, as I know from experience, is what happens when you first contract oral herpes.
BEN KISSEL
Woohoo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
MARCUS PARKS
And it is indeed highly unpleasant when you first get it. But even after catching this embarrassing yet relatively harmless disease, I got a cold sore right now, full fucking disclosure-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(applauding)
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. You're so brave about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you, thank you.
BEN KISSEL
You're so brave.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you, very brave about it. I got a cold sore, I've got acne for the first time in 20 years and I don't know why. I do not look healthy.
BEN KISSEL
A little ladybug.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what you are? You're a herpes American.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to say welcome.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely welcome.
MARCUS PARKS
But even after this whole fucking debacle, Joel never slowed down his habit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because he acted like it was no fucking big deal.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When he got it he was like, 'Yeah, I got this fucking thing wrong with my mouth. I don't know what it is. Yeah, I'm having a bunch of unprotected sex with a bunch of sex workers that are filled with heroin but I don't understand what I'm getting. I'm like sick.'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Little bonus I guess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't understand.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now when Joel went to college he joined the journalism program and became a fairly talented photographer. Remember he learned photography from his mother.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
There he met another journalism student named Robert Mladinich who is the author of today's main source. See Mladinich was writing an article for a magazine called Hank Kaplan's World Wide Boxing Digest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't win. And if there's somebody punching somebody's face in any way on Long Island, we are covering it!
BEN KISSEL
I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get the scoop! I heard a punch outside! I heard a punch.
BEN KISSEL
Dude that is a great magazine right there.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, man. And this and the article was about an undefeated junior middleweight boxer named Rocky Fratto.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's gonna be the number one junior middleweight from Long Island to Jersey City champion that this magazine has ever covered.
BEN KISSEL
I can't wait to read the article.
MARCUS PARKS
Well to go along with his words, Mladinich tapped Joel Rifkin to take photos. They're both part of the SUNY Brockport journalism program so yeah, why not?
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And apparently they hit it off. Mladinich was like, 'No, he's a good guy.' Because they were both from Long Island and they were both kind of loners. Now the boxing match itself was between Rocky Fratto and a man named Steve "The Fighting School Teacher" Michaleyra.
BEN KISSEL
Tell me this isn't your actual profession without telling me this isn't your actual profession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you actually just put the fighting school teacher, not just the school teacher?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
By the end of the match though, Fratto was declared the winner which was an unpopular decision with the crowd.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Before long trash and chairs were being thrown into the ring and audience members tried climbing into the ring to beat the shit out of both Rocky Fratto and the judges.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking Long Island bash, that's what this is all about.
BEN KISSEL
ECW! ECW! ECW!
MARCUS PARKS
Rifkin meanwhile tried hiding under the ring during the fracas but eventually he did poke his head out to take a few pictures of the mini riot.
BEN KISSEL
You step back, take the pictures from the back. No one messes with the photographer. I'm press! I'm press! You won't get killed in a war zone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think they still get killed in war zones sometimes.
BEN KISSEL
Sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
A journalist very recently got killed in a war zone.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta yell it. I'm press!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why if I got into journalism I would be in the restaurant review group.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
This boxing match, Mladinich said, was among the last times he saw Joel Rifkin before Rifkin was revealed as a serial killer well over a decade later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I tell you what, in the two weeks that I knew Joel, he'd become my best friend.
BEN KISSEL
Enough to write a full book about it, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And anyway you're trying to cash in on your relationship.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey!
BEN KISSEL
No?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How dare you say something like that to me?
BEN KISSEL
If I knew someone for two weeks-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How dare you?
BEN KISSEL
I wouldn't write a book about them but okay.
MARCUS PARKS
His tone about his relationship with Joel Rifkin did definitely change between the book and the documentary. In the book it's like yeah, we did this thing together. And the documentary's like my friend Joel Rifkin, Joel Rifkin was a friend of mine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My friend. He was a friend of mine.
MARCUS PARKS
And you don't expect a friend of yours to be a fucking serial killer. You just don't expect that from a friend, a friend that you have like I had with Joel Rifkin, he's a friend!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's my buddy. He's like the guy you go and do friend activities with like a buddy. All of a sudden this buddy of mine, this friend of mine is a serial killer.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Only in Long Island you're like yeah, I didn't really like him that much but I found out he was a serial killer. He's my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a friend of mine. I know this guy, he killed a lot of women, so I know exactly what you're going through.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at least the other guy in the documentary that they interviewed that lived across the street from Joel, the guy who's now in the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble-
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Wait what? I'm gonna vomit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One of my favorite quotes. This is one of my favorite quotes because he was just-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he lived across the street from Joel growing up and man and he's in the documentary wearing his New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble t-shirt. They've been around since '94, they've been playing gigs in the fucking East Village forever, they're around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna post it, I have a picture of this dude. But he was one of my favorites because he was like, 'This is the thing, right? Would you believe my ma, and this is true, she hired Joel Rifkin right to cut the trees. Thing is he'd be so tired out there living the la vida hooker or whatever he's doing, he'd fall asleep in the truck.'
BEN KISSEL
He would fall asleep. What a story that is. That's amazing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why he was on the documentary. 'Yeah, I knew Joel. He used to live across the street from me. He was super fucking weird. And then I realized my friend is a serial killer?'
BEN KISSEL
Wow, that's crazy. That's amazing. And then you got some ska to sing for us I hear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(scatting)
BEN KISSEL
That's unbearable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm scat guy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh it's scat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do the scat part of it. The guy goes (trumpet sounds) next to me. I don't know how to make these kinda woodwind noises. And then I go next to him and I go (scatting).
BEN KISSEL
It's such an offensive form of music.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jazz-Ska Ensemble.
BEN KISSEL
I don't even wanna think about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he also didn't just live across the street from him, he was like, 'Yeah one time he was in the fucking Lower East Side and I had my fucking instrument with me and I walk and I saw Joel and he was in a fucking car and was in there with this girl and I was like, Hey Joel, what the fuck going on? Yo bro, look at me! And then he fucking drove off because he was kind of embarrassed and I thought maybe did he fucking kill that broad? I don't know.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He musta fucking killed that broad. But the thing at the same time though, I didn't wanna embarrass him while he was on a date.
BEN KISSEL
No, of course you don't when you have a big concert to go to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(trumpet sounds)
BEN KISSEL
I love it. You can really tap your big toe to that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't skank anymore, my spine was fused in 1997.
BEN KISSEL
It's for the best, for the best, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though Joel had a hard time holding on to a job, he did get hired one of the New York metro area's many Record World stores which is a music chain that went bankrupt in the early 90s. Interestingly Mladinich pointed out in his book that while Joel Rifkin was completely calm and detached when he talked about his many murders, he became quote "downright unstable and overwhelmed" when it came to talking about his stint at Record world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, he could not handle retail.
BEN KISSEL
What? He was sad? What happened?
MARCUS PARKS
Retail's tough. Retail's not good. Working retail is particularly tough.
BEN KISSEL
No I know retail is tough but what happened?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I worked in retail but you could live your life. He just fell apart. We'll go through it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Joel was on the management track when he was first hired but he never showed up on time and he had no idea how to do accounting or paperwork.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well this is where it starts to build because he's like, 'So I know this is the thing, all right. I got a way into Record World, right? But I knew, I was like, I need some kind of career. So I gotta get on the management track. I figured I'd get in there.'
BEN KISSEL
How did you get on that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They love me! Look at me. They love me.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I went in there, I wanted to be an assistant manager, okay. Then I go from that, I go to main manager, then district manager, and then I go all the way up the chain, right? I'm gonna do that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the thing was that unfortunately what it seems to be is I cannot write on a piece of paper. I look at a form and it just sort of turns into spider webs.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had some kind of learning disability, I don't know what it was.
MARCUS PARKS
He was dyslexic. He was definitely dyslexic, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it was like a rebirth of his high school shit cause he's like, 'Next thing I know is I can't fill out all of these end of day reports. So my main manager has to come and check it. Then the district manager is now coming. And then all of a sudden I'm doing these reports and I got three or four guys, right? And they're all just looking over my shoulder looking at the reports and saying like, hey you gotta work, you gotta fill out all these closing reports, right? And I started feeling the heat, it started reminding me of my father and what I had to go through with my father in high school.'
BEN KISSEL
Right. Maybe a day labor job would be good for you.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually that's what he ended up doing eventually.
BEN KISSEL
Oh fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he came upon that conclusion on his own. According to Joel though in another example of the world doing him dirty, he was fired from record world after being falsely accused or he says falsely accused of selling a friend an armload of albums using Joel's employee discount.
BEN KISSEL
That's very nice to do actually!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because the thing is the week before I tried to get another guy fired for doing the same fucking thing and I found out this 18 year old was a part of the record workers union, this is true.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was trying to sell people discounted albums and I knew this wasn't real and then they decided to cut me out! But he said the worst part was that he couldn't close, right, he couldn't figure out how to close. And so he's building and he's just like, 'I still remember there was a few nights that were very bad feeling when they're turning off the lights inside the store, right. And we were in the exact middle of the circuit board, right. And then all of a sudden I'm sitting there with the safe and the deposit deposit bag and the lights are racing at you from the two sides at the point where all of a sudden now I'm in total darkness. And I'd be sitting there with the bank deposit bag and the safe open. And I'm watching the lights race towards me, right. And I'm throwing everything in the safe, spinning it, and then I'm running through the store with the lights out because I knew I was late trying to deal with the bags.
BEN KISSEL
A creature of the night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's when I'm outside the store. Inside the store it's so light in there it might as well be day.
BEN KISSEL
May I just ask when it comes to having a friend purchase records with your employee discount, why didn't you just buy the records and then give them to your friend who can then give you the money?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I don't know what records he wants.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe you could have asked him that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh fuck.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, there's a way around that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he never shows a minute of emotion talking about murdering multiple women.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But when it comes to closing-
BEN KISSEL
It's difficult to close up a restaurant or a small store.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not that difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not difficult at all.
BEN KISSEL
It's a little difficult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a moron. In Tallahassee the Borders was run by five 19 year olds.
BEN KISSEL
Five. Not just one Joel Rifkin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was the whole team there! He had all of his managers having to double check all of his paperwork.
MARCUS PARKS
The only thing that's hard to close is a bar because you're drunk when you're closing.
BEN KISSEL
That's true.
MARCUS PARKS
That's how I got fired from the only bartending job I ever had because I was really good at talking to the people but I was real bad at counting money at the end of the night.
BEN KISSEL
That's how I got fired too.
MARCUS PARKS
Real bad about mixing drinks too.
BEN KISSEL
I also didn't realize you weren't supposed to take the ones home, you're supposed to cash them out. I did a series of mistakes but whatever. I didn't kill 17 women.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm glad. At least he's saying it.
MARCUS PARKS
At least he's saying it, yeah. Well after the Record World debacle, Joel complained that he became physically ill and he started having angina attacks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My angina! My angina is spiking. You get chest pains.
BEN KISSEL
I mean they need to change the name.
MARCUS PARKS
And you said it was a Long Island thing. I always thought that agita was like a Jewish thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Angina is chest pains, any fat guy can have angina wherever.
BEN KISSEL
You talk about my wife like that again, I'll kill you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anybody can have angina if you can figure out a price.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But agita is also a thing that the fat men get.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Agita. What is agita again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's a really good way to explain it? Let's say I eat two chicken parm subs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's how I feel after that.
BEN KISSEL
With the tomato sauce and the cheese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. If I eat a pile of food right before going to bed and I wake up literally clutching my chest with pain, that's agita.
BEN KISSEL
I get that.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, I get it. So it's the combination of what eating that much food does to your body combined with the anxiety that you get when you realize that what you're doing to your body is slowly killing you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Or just the constant buzz of terror that most people live life with on the day to day basis.
BEN KISSEL
Tomato sauce, onions, they might trigger angina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well possibly due to these physical ailments, Joel spent most of the early to mid 80s unemployed and with what little money he could earn, he spent everything on sex workers, using violent fantasies to get himself aroused but never quite bringing those fantasies to fruition. As far as what he did with the rest of his free time, Joel wrote an autobiographical screenplay based on his time at SUNY Brockport called 'The Frosh'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh. Of course he's a screenwriter.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I'm sure it has shades of Richard McBeef.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually it'd kind of been of the time because Diner was coming out, there was a lot of movies that were like of the moment.
MARCUS PARKS
Slice of life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I view that he viewed himself as a sensitive young man that didn't understand love and it's that style.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one gets to how he's a diamond in the rough.
BEN KISSEL
The Frosh sounds like a coffee company that has semen in all of his drinks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Calling somebody a frosh is something that's very old school that I have not heard in a very long time.
BEN KISSEL
A frosh?
MARCUS PARKS
Frosh, it's slang for freshmen.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Frosh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Took a week's vacation to forget her, his girl took a week's worth of valium and slept.
BEN KISSEL
No more. My third eye is going blind!
MARCUS PARKS
It was The Verve.
BEN KISSEL
No, it doesn't matter, they're all the fucking same.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Now he's guilt stricken sobbing with his head on the floor.
BEN KISSEL
Wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's opposite, it's different.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Joel began to fancy himself a writer after completing The Frosh.
BEN KISSEL
Okay well he is.
MARCUS PARKS
I suppose so, yeah. And eventually he met an older woman and sometimes sex worker named Kathleen Deaver with similar ambitions at the pizzeria in Queens where she worked. She soon ill advisedly hired Joel to assist her on her screenplay and before long a relationship blossomed and Joel moved into Deaver's apartment on West 49th Street.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
However Joel later said that they only had sex once right after they first met. And the relationship ended after Deaver stole a camera and two grand in cash from Rifkin or so Joel claims.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Did he have two grand in cash?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did, he would have built it all up because he did intermittently work.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Kathleen Deaver though, she said, and this is what she told police after Rifkin was arrested for murder, she said they had a brief business relationship and she had to fire him because he didn't do any work. This I believe is the more likely scenario.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's very possible because she could have been a sex worker but we don't know. And then all of his angles are all garbage.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well also if you just look at his history, he has a long, long history of saying, 'Yeah, I'll do that,' and then he doesn't do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a lazy fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like, 'I have an undescribed mental illness. And so everybody said I was lazy and an asshole. But no.'
BEN KISSEL
Well you just don't them you're gonna do anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's the problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Now around the time that Joel was screwing around pretending to be a writer, his ever disappointed father Ben Rifkin was diagnosed with fatal prostate cancer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very sad, horrible.
BEN KISSEL
Horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
And so as he was dying, he told Joel that if he went to SUNY Farmingdale, took one class and got a B, Ben would pay for the next semester in college.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just dying on his fucking deathbed, riddled with cancer. And then you know Joel is being like, 'Hey dad, don't worry, I wrote a screenplay. It's about my action packed one year I went to college.' And he's just like, 'Listen okay. Son, I'm about to go to hell, right. I don't know where the fuck I'm going to go. But if you can get a B in one class-' Because the whole time, right-
BEN KISSEL
I like that's it's a B.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he's trying to manage expectations. And also he said the big problem was that, he's like, 'My other family members did come in and my dad, he was so thin from cancer and he'd give him a big hug with two hands. But then I knew when he hugged me he wouldn't use his arms at all. He'd lay back and I'd have to do all the hugging.'
BEN KISSEL
You're complaining that you had to hug your father who was riddled with prostate cancer?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wouldn't hug me fully enough.
BEN KISSEL
He couldn't, Joel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wouldn't hug me. I saw him use his arms on my brothers! and my sister? He used his arm on her!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, Joel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so I knew if i could get this B-
BEN KISSEL
It's just a B! In any class?
MARCUS PARKS
Well he took the challenge. He enrolled in a biology course.
BEN KISSEL
He took too hard of a class.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing. In a case of what seems like I would call it a spiteful suicide at least when it comes to timing, his father took a fatal dose of barbiturates just before Joel's midterm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! He's building all this up, he's studying and shit.
BEN KISSEL
Oh mama.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because according to him, he's like, 'I didn't want to take something easy like writing or something because I want to take something that actually has a challenge, I wanna take biology. I couldn't do chemistry because that's too difficult. But I could do biology.'
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he wanted to do and it was days before the midterms. And he's like, 'Daddy's gonna see, I'm gonna feel his forearm this weekend.' And then all of a sudden he just fucking committed suicide or tried to commit suicide.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he committed suicide. Yeah, I guess he went into a coma after that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because when he got a 90 the nurse was like, 'You know what they say? Some people in comas can hear. Go tell your father you got a 90 on the class.' And then it was just Joel Rifkin outside of his dying father being like, 'I got 90, dad.' You know, just picked up the arms, tried to do the hug.
BEN KISSEL
Like a cape. Well that was very good, very impressive though.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Rifkin claimed that the suicide ruined any chance he had at redemption.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He said quote, and this is a direct quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"If I succeeded with this, I would have got a hug. It would have been a meaningful hug."
BEN KISSEL
So you killed 17 women because you didn't get you a meaningful hug?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I never was hugged appropriately once.
BEN KISSEL
I can get you a hug. I can get you dog that will hug you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't do it right! Not like my father. My father did it right!
BEN KISSEL
This whole thing is about his father not giving him a hug after he got a B on a biology class.
MARCUS PARKS
While his father is dying of prostate cancer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And committing suicide, probably not even thinking about his son, probably just so riddled with cancer and pain he just wanted it to all end.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He just wanted it over. But I don't know, doing it a couple of days before the midterm. I don't think he committed suicide specifically out of spite but I think the spite played a part in the timing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Simmering underneath.
BEN KISSEL
It's sad but it's just again not killing 17 women sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When he died apparently he did wink. Wink. Gotcha!
MARCUS PARKS
And so using a lost hug as a rationalization, Joel began an even deeper slide into the world of street sex work for the next two years. He spent almost every cent he made doing odd landscaping jobs on front seat blowies and backseat around the worlds.
BEN KISSEL
Like Edward Scissorhands.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I go all the way from Kirk's Cuts to Greenland.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow, you go all the way there.
MARCUS PARKS
Well additionally, Joel was also getting scammed and conned by sex workers with fair regularity because Joel was an easy mark. In one example, Joel picked up a girl on Atlantic Avenue here in Brooklyn and she directed him to a grocery store parking lot where they could do the deed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like it where you can see the dumpster with the bananas in it.
BEN KISSEL
That is nice. And we're freegans as well so you can eat some tomatoes from there and some salads.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this wasn't out of the ordinary because a lot of the women on the street had places where they felt safe doing business, a place that's somewhat a mixture of public and private.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
But as soon as Joel pulled up to a wall in the parking lot, a car pulled up behind him and two guys barreled out claiming to be cops. In a classic New York style scam the guys came at Joel fucking hard, saying that the woman currently in his car had reported that someone had stolen 50 bucks from her and Joel was the most likely suspect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me?
BEN KISSEL
No, my name isn't someone, my name is Joel Rifkin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah damnit.
BEN KISSEL
Goddamnit.
MARCUS PARKS
But of course they said they could take care of it all right now without involving anyone else if Joel just gave them the money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got 30 bucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Joel gave them 30 bucks.
BEN KISSEL
Do you mind if I give you $30 but then can I come in 90 seconds still?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if I already came?
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Joel gave them 30 bucks, he claimed that was all that he had. So they said good enough and they left. But after they left, Joel pulled another 30 from under the seat of his car and just went and picked up another woman because he had mugger money, he knew that he could get conned or scammed at any second.
BEN KISSEL
Scamming the scammers!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never did that? I used to put money in my sock.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, mugger money. Of course.
BEN KISSEL
All of that money that we had.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As a young man in New York, I used to put money in my sock because of how many times I was mugged and you learn that you hide some money. And then that's what he would do. Ed Larson also-
BEN KISSEL
You put it in your sock? I always put it in my ass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's different. I wanted to use it again.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's weird, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ed used to do this back in the day when he used to sell a little bit of weed. He used to hide money from himself and then he used to put money in books and stuff around the house.
BEN KISSEL
He's not scamming a scammer, he's scamming himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But that's what Joel used to do too. In order to make his money last longer he used to hide money from himself and he put it all over his car, he put all of his apartment, so it wouldn't all go in one go.
BEN KISSEL
Okay whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
In another scam, Joel said the same girl ripped him off twice using the exact same con. She told him after he picked her up that she lived with her grandmother and if it was all right with him they could go back to her place to conduct their business.
BEN KISSEL
Oh is this like a 2 for 1?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love this.
BEN KISSEL
Is it a 2 for 1?
MARCUS PARKS
So once they arrived, the girl said she had to go inside to make sure her grandmother was asleep which meant Joel had to wait outside in the car. So you wait out here, I'll go inside and I'll come back and get you if she's asleep.
BEN KISSEL
But wouldn't it be louder that way? It's double entrance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a scam, Kissel. It's an obvious scam.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah instead of coming back the girl just walked through the house to the backyard and hopped the fence, leaving Joel out front with his dick in his hand.
BEN KISSEL
I'm Chris Hansen with MSNBC.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think she's coming back. She did it again. She did it two times.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then he said, 'I don't know if that was even her house. I don't know.'
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can I ask this though, do you think that in a way he is a quote unquote "mark" but I also think again this is about liking the attention and that he likes being in this cyclical world with all of these people.
BEN KISSEL
I think he probably would have liked it better if she didn't just walk away with his money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he just didn't give a single fuck. I think that he had no-
BEN KISSEL
No, he was probably pretty bummed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he was very angry. I think part of it was also he had these violent fantasies and we talk about this again and again where these guys put themselves in a situation where it can be justified.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yeah. He's gaming it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think part of it was that there was truly times when he's like I would have much rather have had a blowjob than getting scammed right now. But I think he also allowed these things to happen in order to one day justify, well one of these days these violent fantasies are gonna come out and they're going to deserve it because of what they did to me.
BEN KISSEL
You'll see, you'll see what I'll do!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He liked being mad. That's what it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, loved it. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He liked being mad. There was something about it because he says that there is a clue because he said it was the only time he felt any sort of solace was the one time he stood up for himself in high school where he yelled at all those dudes, it was the one time he ever felt that where he was just like he allowed himself to experience the emotion and there was power in his anger.
MARCUS PARKS
From what it seems, Joel didn't necessarily have a specific stress trigger point that led to his first murder like other serial killers we've covered in the past, like Dennis Rader getting fired or like Bundy discovering that his sister is his mom. Instead it seems like Joel Rifkin, after 10 years of picking up sex workers from the street without incident, 300 by his count, he decided to finally give in to the violent fantasies that had only gotten stronger since junior high.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, now taking the stand, Mr. Rifkin. Okay, hear me out. 300 sex workers, 17 dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about the ratio.
BEN KISSEL
Ratio. If you're on Twitter and I got 300 likes and 17 dislikes, I'm right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically you're not too far off.
MARCUS PARKS
Well see Joel Rifkin not surprisingly still lived with his mother out on Long Island and in March of 1989 when Joel was 30, Jeanne Rifkin went out of town on a whitewater rafting trip to Colorado.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's very active.
BEN KISSEL
Good for her. Must be in her 60s.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, her husband died not too long before and so she's trying to get out there, she's trying to get active, she's trying to have a new life.
BEN KISSEL
Oh she wants to die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's getting railed by a guy on a raft.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this gave Joel what was pretty much his first opportunity ever to bring a sex worker back home, which was the location where most of his violent fantasies played out. This is a fairly common occurrence with serial killers as most commit murders and locations or areas in which they feel comfortable and safe. Eventually though, emboldened because he rarely came close to getting caught, Joel Rifkin came to feel comfortable and safe almost anywhere in New York City.
BEN KISSEL
Ben Kissel, the Buffalo Wild Wings Killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The only place he feels at home.
MARCUS PARKS
The Buffalo Wild Wings at JFK, that's the only place.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's a good one. And the Barney's Beanery over here in LAX.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We take a look at the evidence and it seems that Ben Kissel in his rage, he massacred over 400 wings this weekend. But he left those other 1000 alone. That was because they were unpaid for.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice?
MARCUS PARKS
So around 10PM one night after Joel watched an episode of Kojak, he decided to drive his Ford F-350 into Manhattan and before long-
BEN KISSEL
Jeez, go to bed buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But hey that's nighttime. He's a man of the night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm addicted to the night!
BEN KISSEL
I forgot you're addicted to the night.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, 10PM after Kojak, that's when the night begins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my nicotine patch!
BEN KISSEL
I'm sorry, I forgot.
MARCUS PARKS
And before long Joel found a woman named Heidi Balch on East 12th and 1st Avenue in the East Village. It's where that AMC is over there on 1st Avenue.
BEN KISSEL
Of course we all know exactly where that is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, across the street from the L train vintage place. You know that block.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now according to Joel's description which is all we have, Heidi was not doing well, just like a lot of the women Joel murdered. See this was also a time when AIDS was a particularly bad problem in New York City and Heidi from Joel's description sounds like a heroin addict deep into a deadly infection. But on the other hand, Joel's description - oh man, the descriptions of the women that Joel Rifkin killed are devastating, every single one of them are devastating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really sad. It's very, very sad. Because again, I feel like that's what he was choosing was the most sick.
BEN KISSEL
So was there a, what is it called, Angel of Death type thing? Did he have a mercy killing?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he just literally did it.
BEN KISSEL
He was just trying to get the weakest people he could find.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Absolutely. But on the other hand Joel's descriptions of the women he murdered, it seems it's a further attempt of dehumanization.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean he implies again and again that their deaths were no big loss. And ironically this is often the same justification cops give for not investigating sex worker murders. They use the exact same fucking thing. It's no big loss.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's weird. Yeah, it's the same thing. Literally they were going to die anyway.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But regardless of Joel's read on the situation, he brought Heidi back to his house in the middle of the night, not worrying what the neighbors might think because Joel was known in the neighborhood as a quote "eccentric nocturnal creature".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a werewolf!
BEN KISSEL
That's pretty cool.
MARCUS PARKS
And so within minutes of walking in the door, Joel and Heidi had sex. And being in a place in which he felt safe, that gave rise to even stronger violent fantasies. He's setting himself up to do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But nothing happened during the act and afterward Heidi took a nap while Joel watched 1989 MTV, perhaps catching Fine Young Cannibals or REM or even Milli Vanilli during their short lived time near the top.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Back when the Music Television actually showed music videos!
BEN KISSEL
Real music videos, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But once Heidi woke up and wanted to head out to score more heroin, Joel got angry at what he called her 'single mindedness'. But he did agree to take her or at least he agreed at first. In a split second though Joel claimed that something happened, something happened, she said something, something popped in his mind and instead of grabbing his keys, he picked up an 18 inch long 10 pound Howitzer tank shell he'd just bought at a flea market and crushed Heidi's skull with it, raining it down over and over and over again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he said he started hitting her, he hit her so many times it was when his arm started hurting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So we're blaming MTV for this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't. I don't think it's that. Actually I would more blame Ridiculousness later on.
BEN KISSEL
So just all of a sudden he fucking snapped?
MARCUS PARKS
Just fucking snapped and decided this is when I'm going to do it.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
And weirdly his first instinct after he did it, he turned up the television as loud as loud as he could.
BEN KISSEL
He turned up the television?
MARCUS PARKS
Turned up the television. And he's panicked, he thought the cops are gonna be here any second. But as he was closing all the blinds in his house, Heidi got back up. She attacked him the best she could and bit his finger almost to the bone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn.
MARCUS PARKS
But eventually he pinned her against the wall and held her there by her neck until she finally expired. Then he took a nap.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I mean he's empty. He's nothing. He's a nothing person.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Joel Rifkin experiences nothing. He wants to be as far away from himself as humanly possible. It actually kind of makes sense that he took a nap.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean I guess he's exhausted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well truly emotionally exhausted in his own way.
MARCUS PARKS
When he woke up a few hours later though he stuffed the body into a plastic bag and dragged it down to the basement where he got to work on a methodical disposal. Reducing the act to nothing more than a dissection in a biology class, Joel dismembered Heidi's corpse without compunction. Using an Exacto knife as a kind of scalpel, he made small controlled cuts over joints and popped the bones out of their sockets, later comparing it to carving up a turkey.
BEN KISSEL
Is that why he took biology?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no.
MARCUS PARKS
He just took biology because he thought he could get a B.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he just thought he could get a B. And then the police will be like you can actually decapitate somebody using an Exacto knife? And essentially he just said you just have to do it real carefully.
BEN KISSEL
Just like that episode of Seinfeld when they wanted to name him OJ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just like it. I was glad they kept that scene.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Then Joel began pulling the teeth out of the decapitated head. Although for some reason he didn't finish the job, he left four teeth still in there. I don't know why he just went with... How many we got? 24, 22?
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like the kind of guy whose father wanted him to get a B.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it sounded like he couldn't finish a single thing in his life.
BEN KISSEL
He just didn't finish anything, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
After that he stuffed the head into an empty paint can which went in the back of Joel's truck along with the body parts which were stuffed in 33 gallon trash bags. First Joel drove to New Jersey where the head was discarded still in the paint can in what Joel thought was a remote wooded area. About 70 miles north, Joel tossed the bag containing the legs into a creek.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Finally Joel returned to New York City in the same neighborhood where he picked up Heidi and heaved the bags containing her arms and torso into the East River off Lower Manhattan, back when such things were easily done without much fear of discovery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had been thinking about this for a very long time. I think that's the reason why he jumped right into action because it does seem like a more experienced serial killer doing this crime.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I think it's because he had already had this plan, he knew he was going to do this the second he started hitting her.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now it seemed like no one was the wiser when it came to the missing sex worker and in that Joel was correct. But a severed head found in the woods catches everyone's attention.
BEN KISSEL
I would think so, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because what Joel thought was a remote wooded area was actually the border of a golf course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, this fucking asshole.
BEN KISSEL
What a fucking moron.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But straight up it was a guy who hit a ball into the rough, he went over there and he found the head in the paint can.
BEN KISSEL
No Steve, it's play it where it lies. Steve, play it where it lies!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just like, 'And that's how I knew if I could just get my wedge in there, I know that if it was laying right on the edge of her teeth, if I could just chip it, if I could just chip it, I could maybe make the green.'
BEN KISSEL
Right. Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But no one even came close to Joel Rifkin for the head. And in fact Heidi wasn't even identified until 2013 and until then she was known as Susie. I mean they did try to identify her, they even did some reconstruction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did a lot, they put a lot into it, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There was one cop who actually took it upon himself, he's like, 'I'm gonna fucking figure this out, I'm gonna do it.' And it took him until 2013, he fucking did it. So kudos to him.
BEN KISSEL
I went down and I asked every single person, do you know a woman with four teeth? And they all knew people with whole mouths of teeth.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as Joel's mother went, she returned from Colorado after the murder to find the same disappointing oddball son she'd left, having no idea that a murder had occurred in her absence.
BEN KISSEL
So what did you do? What did you do when I was gone Joel?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing!
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Music is up really loud on the TV.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
You didn't have a party or anything did you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after the murder of Heidi Balch, Rifkin swore off murdering.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm done! I am out!
BEN KISSEL
Wow, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But he continued to pick up sex workers from the street, although he tried stopping that as well for a time. In an attempt to will himself out of both, he began writing daily reminders that said:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"No more P, no more K."
MARCUS PARKS
That meant no more prostitutes, no more killing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No more, stop it! And then I put a rubber band on my wrist. What I do is every single time I think about killing a sex worker, I just go snap, and I snap it and I'm like ow ow ow.
BEN KISSEL
Well thank you so much for coming to our senate hearing Justice Rifkin. We really appreciate you. So you just keep a calendar of everything, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like beer.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But as time passed and he returned to his old ways, Rifkin found that the memory of the murder replayed in his head almost constantly. But where most people would find this loop to be horrific and maddening, Joel described it as annoying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had no emotional content.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Mostly he was angry that killing now excited him more than sex and because he found himself fantasizing about killing every woman he was with, he had to fight the urge. And because he had to fight the urge, he couldn't maintain his pitiful little erection. Meanwhile Joel almost started relationships with certain sex workers he picked up or at least he seemed to try to get a sort of girlfriend experience from time to time, which of course never fucking worked out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I remember that movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In another incident in which his mother was out of town, Joel brought a woman back to Long Island and hung out all day without having sex. Instead the woman stole most of his mother's jewelry when Joel wasn't looking and when Jeanne returned, Joel had to admit that he brought a sex worker back to their home and she'd stolen everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I kind of feel almost in a way Jeanne was like at least you did one normal thing in a way, sorta.
BEN KISSEL
Kinda.
MARCUS PARKS
She was real mad, she was real angry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I'd be fucking pissed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah i would be upset about the jewelry and stuff. You know Long Island ladies, they love the jewelry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh believe me, I know. I know. I remember my father buying the five carat tennis bracelet or my mom in the back of a truck somewhere where they go up above a Chinese food restaurant. And it was great, great jewelry.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
And so using this experience as a justification, Joel bided his time until his mother went out of town again. His chance came in late 1990, 18 months after his first murder when Joel picked up a woman named Julie Blackbird, which sounds like the name of a vengeful spirit who murders serial killers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is our fucking next comic book that we're gonna write.
BEN KISSEL
Julie Blackbird.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, fucking Julie Blackbird. At his mother's house, Joel and Julie watched a little MTV, perhaps catching the videos for Love Shack.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
Or Funky Cold Medina or even the forgotten power ballad When Children The Cry by one hit wonders White Lion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When The Children Cry! I haven't even thought of When The Children Cry in a while, can we play a section of that?
BEN KISSEL
Wow. I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, there were a lot of hits. Madonna had a big year. Paula Abdul, 1989, she ruled 1989.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big year. Was that Cold Hearted Snake?
MARCUS PARKS
Cold Hearted Snake, I don't think it was Cold Hearted Snake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) He's a cold hearted snake, look into his eyes.
MARCUS PARKS
It was more that Paula Abdul, it's not like Opposites Attract, it's not the ones that you really love it. It's kind of the lesser Paula Abdul tracks.
BEN KISSEL
Was Amy Grant popular?
MARCUS PARKS
Amy Grant I think had a hit that year as well. I think she was near the bottom of the top 100 list of videos on MTV in 1989.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
1988 was Cold Hearted Snake!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that was what all of my cousins, all the girl cousins, they got together and they dressed me up as a little girl and we all danced together to Cold Hearted Snake for our family. It was a big choreographed number.
BEN KISSEL
Look at you. And you're not a serial killer at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I never killed anybody. The only thing I've killed is a Jersey Mike's sub.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely, there you go. You really got that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah 1988, that was also the year of (singing) You're unbelievable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boom!
BEN KISSEL
Pretty cool. It's pretty believable but all right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But after having sex and watching a few more of these wonderful hits of yesteryear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember. I remember.
BEN KISSEL
I'm forced to now.
MARCUS PARKS
All while Joel felt the urge to kill rising, he and Julie Blackbird drove to an ATM so he could pay her what he owed. And that was when Joel got a notice for insufficient funds.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh. I didn't know they had ATMs in 1990 to be honest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, you could still get them. What he didn't know was that back in the day you could still take money out and you put yourself into rears.
BEN KISSEL
Could you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, you could. Eddie taught me that trick but that was another trick that he taught me. If you run out of money, you could take the money out of your bank account and then it just goes into the negative.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's how you get overdraft fees.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's awesome. It's awesome!
BEN KISSEL
You end up having to pay a lot more.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Much, much more, yeah. It's a vicious cycle that keeps a lot of people in poverty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's the idea. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
The nice thing is it's rent to own. It's rent to own. Everything is on layaway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Layaway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're only about 500 years away.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the rage within Joel hit highest level it could, so he drove back to his mother's house with Julie claiming that he needed to wait for the bank to open so he could get her the money that she was owed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they love that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh love it, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But once they walked back into the house, Joel picked up a table leg, one of the many his mother had laying around.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
His mother, her hobby was restoring old furniture. So there were a bunch of table legs and shit just littering the house.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like his mom was a very independent, strong woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he had incredibly capable and wonderful parents.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, there was no reason. Yeah. And he used that table leg to beat Julie Blackbird to death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this was like 6 months, right, or 18 months.
MARCUS PARKS
18 months.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was 18 months after, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Rifkin of course blames not himself for this murder but the ATM. He said that if he would have gotten the cash, he would have paid Julie and just driven her home and therefore she would have still been alive today. So it's not his fault, it's the ATM's fault.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They got one of those American Psycho ATMs. That's what he got, yeah. Put the cat in the machine.
BEN KISSEL
Put the cat in the machine?
MARCUS PARKS
You know what? I don't remember that. I watched that move like once in college.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah when he's at the ATM. It's great, rewatch it. It holds up, it's fucking awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
I might rewatch that tonight.
BEN KISSEL
I'm actually voting for him in November.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I wrote Patrick Bateman into everything.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Really great.
MARCUS PARKS
But even though this murder supposedly disturbed Joel in the moment, he still as he did with the first one took a nap after the murder. This time though after taking the body down to the basement, he decided he needed a full night's rest before taking care of the disposal because this one was going to be far more labor intensive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gotta take care of me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you really wanna.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see him with this mask.
BEN KISSEL
Get your loofah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's got his little facial, like flappy thing on, he's just watching Friends.
BEN KISSEL
I feel like there's something I have to do later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What is it? This is my time.
MARCUS PARKS
Remembering how easily part of the last corpse had been found, Joel woke up the next morning and drove to Home Depot where he bought a few bags of quick cement. After dismembering the body limb by limb again with the help of an Exacto knife, noting that he was surprised there wasn't a lot of blood to mop up this time because most of it had coagulated already, Rifkin brought out the cement. The parts were entombed in three separate blocks but Joel neglected to take into account that even though it was quick cement, it still had to dry. So the slab sat in his basement for days while he waited for them to solidify.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
And once they were ready for transport, all three were driven and sunk to the bottom of the East River. And even though it took Joel 18 months to take his second victim, the next four would come in rapid succession. And that's where we'll pick back up in our conclusion to our series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes because then he'll do his first of what Joel will go on to call his clusters, he would do these in clusters. And next week he gets a lot more bloody, we're gonna talk a little bit more about the reasons why, we don't know why he is this way and maybe next week we'll talk a little bit more about that. And we're gonna hear probably a lot more things about my uncles.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My uncle Butch also worked for the sanitation career but he also got wiped out by scandal. Guys made a lot of weird decisions in the early 90s.
BEN KISSEL
Don't mess with sanitation, that's all I know. Also the only clusters anyone should have is a peanut cluster, we all agree with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
What about a Goo Goo Cluster?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's a Goo Goo Cluster?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, not everything has to be about the fucking Goo Goo Dolls.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's a wonderful candy.
BEN KISSEL
Is it?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's a southern candy. A Goo Goo Cluster.
BEN KISSEL
Let's take a look at it here. Goo Goo Cluster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Goo Goo Cluster?
BEN KISSEL
Oh it's just a whole bunch of rotten teeth and spoiled children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A Goo Goo Cluster is an ice cream.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a tasty combination of nuts, caramel, nougat, and milk chocolate in a deliciously rounded cluster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's also a thing... Yeah, oh yeah. I'm looking at it.
BEN KISSEL
Oh fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess we wouldn't understand.
BEN KISSEL
I guess we wouldn't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's a Goo Goo Cluster thing, y'all wouldn't understand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Y'all wouldn't understand!
BEN KISSEL
Y'all wouldn't understand. Thank you all so much for listening. We're going to see at Comic- Con this weekend or two weekends from now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Which we can't wait, we're gonna do a little bit of a panel and some signings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, San Diego. We have not gotten any information about our schedule.
BEN KISSEL
We got nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But as soon as we have that we will put that up. You can come and see us, you must come to Europa. Do we want to list off those dates?
BEN KISSEL
All right, let's list them off. I'm gonna google my schedule like I always do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna be in Europe.
BEN KISSEL
In Europe because you know when you're American going into the bathroom and American coming out of the bathroom, what are you in the bathroom? European!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
European.
MARCUS PARKS
Those dates are starting in Amsterdam on October 6th, we're going to be at De Meervaart.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Dutch accent) Yeah. And we're going to cover the entire show in gold.
MARCUS PARKS
(Dutch accent) Gold, I love gold.
BEN KISSEL
Also I have gotten confirmation that the Sex Museum in Amsterdam, the entire second floor is still just animal fucking people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just gonna avoid it.
BEN KISSEL
So no one should go there.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm gonna go, I have to go now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, you're gonna be traumatized. I got a DM, the guy was like I still don't understand why it's like that.
MARCUS PARKS
October 10th Edinburgh, then we're gonna be going to Dublin, Manchester, London, and Birmingham. And that's all gonna be in October of this year. So go to lastpodcastontheleft.com to see if you can make it to one of those shows. We can't wait to see you all out there, we had such a good fucking time the last two times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And we can't wait to go a third.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can't fucking wait.
BEN KISSEL
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And go to Z2comics.com and check out, pre order Last Comic Book on the Left Volume II, this time we have even more quality, there's so much quality in this, I can't wait.
BEN KISSEL
I like quality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you see any of the, we actually got that big creative roundup yesterday, it's fucking awesome.
BEN KISSEL
Very cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. For Volume II Rick Veitch did a Philip K. Dick story that's gonna blow your fucking mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so cool.
MARCUS PARKS
It's amazing. Yeah, yeah. We got stuff from all kinds of artists and writers that you guys are gonna fucking love. As soon as it comes in, we'll let y'all know.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network and yeah, I guess that's about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it.
BEN KISSEL
I'm happy we finally got to Joel Rifkin, the guy is more pathetic than I even thought.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is coming from a real Randy Kraft fan. The guy who fucking loves him.
BEN KISSEL
I hate you. All right everyone, hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me. If you got a chance, you got an extra minute, toss a hail my way.
BEN KISSEL
Toss a ham his way and hug your children apparently or they're gonna become serial killers as if the pressure of being a parent wasn't enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sell your children.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.