HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) This is the final countdown!
BEN KISSEL
Oh did you watch that? Yeah that is the final countdown for people in New York. Did you see your nuclear holocaust preparedness? Get inside, stay inside, watch media.
MARCUS PARKS
So we've had a nuclear attack, doesn't matter how, doesn't matter who did it, we just know that the big one has finally come. Here's how you can survive and help your family to survive the upcoming nuclear holocaust.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Top 10 nuclear holocaust locations to listen to podcasts.
MARCUS PARKS
She's way too cool about it. Way to cool. Step one, get inside with your friends and your family. It's like fucking Christ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Chilling. It's absolutely chilling.
BEN KISSEL
Have fun with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you're gonna do a New York warning about nuclear holocaust, it has to be pronounced (New York accent) nuclear holocaust. That's the only way for it to be legit.
MARCUS PARKS
And Henry, speaking to your point on 10/10 wins this morning, I did hear a woman from Queens describe something as 'ha-ribble'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ha-ribble.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh my god, it's ha-ribble. It's so ha-ribble.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's ha-ribble. Even today we're going to get into even more of these divisive, honestly I'm gonna say the acts of Joel Rifkin are divisive.
BEN KISSEL
They're divisive, really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of people can't agree whether or not are you on Joel's side or not. Me personally, I'm against Joel Rifkin only just because I know two other Joels and they're better than him.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You got Joel at the deli and he always looks at me, I tell him a little thinner, I need it a little thinner and he always does it. I say thinner and he's just like, 'Like this?' I was like paper thin and he does it paper thin. I was like I can see through it. And then Joel, the guy who balled me out my sophomore year in college. But Joel Rifkin's a bad one. It's ha-ribble.
BEN KISSEL
I agree with that. Absolutely. I'm happy you got balled out by a Joel in college. Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left everyone, I am Ben hanging out with Henry and hanging out with Marcus. We are onto part two of one of Queen's biggest douchebags which is saying a lot, Joel Rifkin.
MARCUS PARKS
Technically he belongs more to Long Island than he does Queens.
BEN KISSEL
Okay!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay Long Island, whatever. Long Island, Queens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to remember before you begin this episode, Long Island is one word.
MARCUS PARKS
Long Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you have to Long-guy-land.
BEN KISSEL
Long-guy-land!
MARCUS PARKS
Long-guy-land.
BEN KISSEL
Long-guy-land.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as we mentioned last episode when discussing Joel Rifkin's childhood, he could easily be compared to Dennis Rader in that neither of them had any known childhood trauma or abuse yet still became massive murderous dickheads.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would also compare him to Dennis Rader in the fact that I believed that he had an extremely involved fantasy life that he and Dennis Rader would not talk about.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They would purposely keep that hidden because I think in their own minds that was their little secret.
BEN KISSEL
And I'm going to compare him to Dennis Rader because I think Dennis Rader would hate the comparison so much because these people are such pitiful little schmucks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You know Dennis Rader is like, 'I'm smarter than him, I could set up a camera by myself while in panties.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dennis, he sends me letters and I'm just like why don't you go measure some grass, Dennis? Why don't you go catch a fucking dog, Dennis?
BEN KISSEL
Joel!
MARCUS PARKS
Now one thing you may have noticed about our show is that we use Dennis Rader quite a bit as a sort of serial killer touchstone and that's not just because he's the serial killer that I personally find the most fascinating. Rather Dennis Rader gets referenced so much partly because he actively studied other serial killers and since he was trying to become one of the most well known killers in history on par with the Zodiac, he became an amalgamation of those he studied.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really is kind of the proto self aware serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he carried that through, he prided himself on that of learning and adapting, fade away. He's trying to learn how to do the fade away because he can't jump as much from the center line, learning a lot about sports, Kissel.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely, great job. When you get a little bit older you have to change your technique. And of course with Dennis Rader, he got a little punny with it when he put his cereal boxes in the back of trucks and said get it? I'm a serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
And you know what, Ben? That is actually going towards Henry's point, it's postmodern. He is doing an active comment on serial killing even though it's fucking stupid and it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Yeah, he's a jerk off and he's a human fucking wedgie and I hope he dies choking his own vomit or whatever. I hope he dies of fucking horrible cancer. But yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And as it happens, Joel Rifkin was much the same way. When Rifkin was finally captured, police found news clippings and magazine articles that followed the exploits of Ted Bundy and more importantly the Green River Killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean Ga-wy and fucking Joel are like twins. They are so similar because they're both fucking glassy-eyed dolts. Talk about the lack of introspection of the non thought about life, the non examined life. Both of them were just like pillars of cement.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well at the very least remember Gary Ridgway could paint one hell of a truck and Joel Rifkin was good at nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing. Ga-wy was a detailer, he had an actual viable skill. Joel Rifkin was an anchor of society.
BEN KISSEL
I'll tell you one thing that episode of pimp my ride where Gary Ridgway was the guest car painter, it got pretty bloody.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, dark.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I put a sex worker in your car so you could sex work while you drive.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Wow it fell apart as soon as we were done shooting.
MARCUS PARKS
See during Rifkin's reign, the investigation into the Green River Killer murders was the most well known ongoing serial killer investigation and perhaps the world. Dozens upon dozens of sex workers had been found murdered in the Pacific Northwest over a period of decades. And the identity of the killer, Gary Ridgway, wouldn't be discovered until well after Rifkin was captured. But concerning Rifkin, Joel not only followed the exploits of the Green River Killer but also imitated him. Here's a direct quote from Rifkin laying out how it was all done:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"He buried one, I buried one. He went from water to land, I went from water to land. He placed one by an airport, I placed one by an airport. He did things in clusters, me, I did things that clusters."
BEN KISSEL
Well it sounds like you're a bit of a copycat, Joel. Not really original whatsoever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no! It's an homage, you fucking moron.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what it is about him is that Joel Rifkin though, unlike Dennis Rader who wanted to be known as this ultimate predator, he wouldn't even let the knowledge that he was training himself to be a serial killer in and that he was imitating these things. It wasn't until it was pointed out afterwards when they said, 'Hey, we found these books.' And he was just like, yeah. And it wasn't until after he started murdering and then he realized like, I guess I'm doing what he's doing or whatever. And it's the same nonchalant flat delivery of every single thing that he ever talked about his killing past. It's weird. It's in its own way it's like he truly was compartmentalized fully.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like he might have been a little bit of a Garfield himself, trying to learn through osmosis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Yes. Actually you know what? That's fucked up because I kind of put him in a little bit, he's way more Odie than he his Garfield.
BEN KISSEL
Aw Odie.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the thing about Dennis Rader and Joel Rifkin is that while they may be known in Wichita, Kansas and New York City respectively as boogiemen and while true crime nerds may study them as well, the average person has no fucking clue who they are. That's because while BTK and Rifkin are notorious, they're still on the B team if we bring our Batman villain scale back into play.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. While Gein and Bundy and Dahmer and Gacy, those are Jokers, your Riddlers, your Two- Faces, your Mr. Freezes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
BTK and Rifkin, they're more your Killer Crocs, your Clayfaces, Scarecrows at best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Side guys.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not gonna give Mr. Freeze the A team. Mr. Freeze is not an A team supervillain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah dude. Mr. Freeze is A team.
MARCUS PARKS
Mr. Freeze is easily A team. Mr. freeze is totally a team, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know about that.
MARCUS PARKS
He's the lowest of the A team, he's the lowest rung of the A team. But Mr. Freeze, if you read the first trade of Ed Brubaker's Gotham Central, Mr. Freeze can be quite terrifying when he wants to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Kissel, your favorite movie, The Batman, the sequel is going to have Mr. Freeze in it, so you better get boned up. But you know for a fact he's gonna be like a refrigerator salesman or something. You know what I mean? It's not going to be what we want Mr. Freeze to be.
BEN KISSEL
Maytag guy, Maytag guy.
MARCUS PARKS
See if serial killers like Jack Unterweger and Hayden Clark, if they're the first villains Batman beats up in the storyline while he's trying to solve a mystery or prevent a disaster, those guys are the first rungs on the serial killer ladder. Joel Rifkin is the guy that you think is the big bad but is actually still an underling himself. He's like Scarecrow in Batman Begins. It's not Scarecrow who's the big bad, it's Ra's al Ghul that's the big bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, whoa, whoa! You fucking bastard! You mean to tell me I'm some kind of red herring in all of this?
MARCUS PARKS
Red herring. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're just a red herring. That's what you are.
BEN KISSEL
It's not bad, Joel. As a matter of fact Joel, what if you're the Red Herring? That's kind of cool, think about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like that because fish move silently in the water, right.
BEN KISSEL
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Invisible from the surface.
BEN KISSEL
And they lay eggs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never see a fish. No one can ever see fish. That I know.
BEN KISSEL
What if you start leaving little turds at all crime scenes like your little eggs and then you're the Red Herring?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not ready to talk about the little turds. I'm not ready to talk about that.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But nevertheless, even though Rifkin doesn't have the zazz of a Dahmer or a Gacy, wannabes are fascinating in their own right for entirely different reasons, partly because they're so desperate to differentiate themselves even though they all follow the same patterns.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what it is? Is that Rifkin, we cover serial killers, he's kind of like a boilerplate version of a serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's not a heck of a lot of special about him but he is more identifying that it's an American phenomena that is going to continue to repeat again and again and that they are all echoes of these original criminals that became super famous in America, like the American style serial killer that was created by Richard Ramirez and Jeffrey Dahmer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He's the Alex Jones to Bill Cooper's Bill Cooper.
MARCUS PARKS
Somewhat yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He's a dumber copy of a copy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He's that guy, he's that stereotypical when he was arrested, (New York accent) Oh my god, he was just the nicest man. He was so quiet. They were such a quiet family. Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I also love the other book I read, I believe it was called 'Garden of Bones', it was very bad.
BEN KISSEL
That's a cool name though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was very stupid, very, very stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
It doesn't even make any sense. He didn't bury any of them.
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm just saying it's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Garden of Graves.
MARCUS PARKS
He buried one of them. But that's the thing, 'Garden of Graves', that doesn't make any sense because he only buried one and it was a very shallow grave. We'll get to it later, Jesus fucking Christ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Garden of Bones is what I'm calling my barbecue restaurant, not a true crime book.
BEN KISSEL
That's a great name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they keep interviewing all the fuckheads that knew him from his childhood and they're all like, 'He was a fucking nerd.' And that's all they can say. His pants were too tight so we had to fucking torture him.
BEN KISSEL
That's embarrassing.
MARCUS PARKS
That came up again and again and again. Yeah his pants were fucking too tight. What do you want us to do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at this guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Look at him, his pants are too tight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Walking around, begging for abuse.
BEN KISSEL
It's a little bizarre, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I think about Joel Rifkin makes him so fascinating to true students of true crime? It's the fact that he really is an everyman.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not like Richard Ramirez was born to be evil, Jeffrey Dahmer is just spooky.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He's a ghost man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ghost man. You know a Joel Rifkin, we talked about it in the last episode, you know one, you met one, you went to school with one.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. Dahmer, don't forget he worked in the chocolate factory and being around that much chocolate for that long numbs the soul because it's no longer special.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Willy Wonka became a slave trader.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, he did. And also when it comes to burying bodies, I'm gonna bury men, I'm gonna kill them if they have an eight inch penis and I'm gonna bury them two inches deep, keep the cock hard: Garden of Bones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What is this? Where is your imagination?
BEN KISSEL
And then I'll take a lawnmower over them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
It's interesting, yeah. To spend five minutes in that old cranium of yours.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's been thinking about that for a while. Like since we brought up Garden of Bones.
BEN KISSEL
Garden of Bones is a fantastic... I mean it's a horrible restaurant because all the food is gone but whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning those repeated patterns, after Rifkin dismembered the second woman he murdered, he took possession of her jewelry as a trophy as many serial killers do. However Joel maintained that the jewelry wasn't a trophy even though he said he kept about 80% of the possessions belonging to the women he killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of crazy. I watched this interview with him with this FBI profiler and he constantly says like, 'I don't know, all that shit just ended up in my house.' He acts nonchalant which is why I think he's hiding something because obviously there was a deep dark fantasy life inside of him. And he talks about how the first murder replayed in his head everyday.
MARCUS PARKS
18 months.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It replayed and replayed for 18 months. And his first excuse was well I had to kill again because then it would stop the videotape in my brain, I could put it in a new videotape, now at least I could watch The Little Mermaid. You know I mean? I could put something in there, now I'm watching old episodes of Hogan's Heroes. That's a funny nazi.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness. I love those war... That is a funny nazi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then it's really weird, he professes to have no inner life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Even though he must, it's not an accident that he kept these things. He was fantasizing with them.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course, they all do.
BEN KISSEL
So was he haunted by the first murder then?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think he was sexually excited.
BEN KISSEL
So did he literally just get bored like when I had Dawn of the Dead stuck in my VCR when I was in college? Love Dawn of the Dead but I watched it 1000 times and I was like I gotta get a new thing in here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. What he was more haunted by was the fact that sex was no longer doing it for him. And the fact that this was replaying again and again and again in his head told him that this is what does it for me now, this is my whole thing. And like I said last episode, it was annoying to to him. It was annoying like he had to take a new medication or something. Like I can't go out in the sun anymore without putting on sunblock. It's one of those, that's how he looked at it like this is this is an annoying thing that I have to do. Ugh, I gotta kill someone to come? What a fucking hassle!
BEN KISSEL
Honestly he sounds like you discussing food, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing about it, that's how nonchalant he thought of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
There's this extra fucking thing I gotta do now? Ugh all right.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also he said in his head the first time he killed somebody and then killed again, he was like this is the first successful thing I've ever done in my life.
BEN KISSEL
Well I don't know if that's true, Joel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what he said. And how do you feel, Bono? Your precious sunglasses. Somebody else beat the fucking shit out of you right there, huh?
BEN KISSEL
Mother Teresa of musicians, a scam artist to the core.
MARCUS PARKS
Concerning what else Joel Rifkin may have done to the bodies, it was suspected if not downright assumed that he had followed in the footsteps of his hero Ted Bundy, who we cannot stress enough was a disgusting necrophiliac.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Joel Rifkin was asked point blank if he had engaged in necrophilia at any time, he said that while he had considered it, he never went through with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a how you know he did it!
BEN KISSEL
Well yeah, I considered it. What are we talking about?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a direct quote.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Henry's going to read this quote. Judge for yourself, I think you might be right on the money on this one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"You know, I just remember looking down at her and thinking about it. I'm looking at her and I'm like, nah."
MARCUS PARKS
That's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the quote.
BEN KISSEL
You know what's just so funny about that is that it seems like you were so much closer than most people to committing necrophilia and the fact that you thought about it makes me think that you don't have-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as they're dead I'm like ugh. It's just like now you're all dead here? Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
Weird. It just seems like you don't have a lot of impulse control so I think you thought about it and then you probably did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, no, no. You'll see why it's not impulse control because I control every impulse. I can fucking jump out a window if I want but I don't.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah that's just self preservation, that's very basic.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning when Joel had his orgasms, and I'm sure you're all champing at the bit to hear this one, I knew Ben-
BEN KISSEL
I wanna hear how this man from Long Island comes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I always do it, listen, when it comes to me with coming, I always KISS, Keep It Short and Sweet.
BEN KISSEL
You can see the Boar's Head on the table as he puts nipples on it. Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Joel maintains that he'd never quote unquote "finished" with a dead body and he either came during strangulation or not at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or he had already come.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Sometimes it had nothing to do with the actual sexual act in the moment, it was more of a power move.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You like that? You like that, Kissel?
MARCUS PARKS
Do you like that?
BEN KISSEL
No because I can see the deli mayonnaise of come squirt out of his weird cock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish it was more, I tell you what, I wish it was more, I should be eating or something. I don't know how these guys get the gallons of it, they got gallons shooting out of them.
BEN KISSEL
If it was a chicken wing side it would be the blue cheese, I would imagine.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead as per Rifkin's interviews with author Robert Mladinich, Rifkin said that he looked at the bodies post murder as a chore to take care of rather than a sex object. He said, quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I looked at it as a job. Like okay, this is what you gotta do now. You do this and that to make it smaller so you can get rid of it."
BEN KISSEL
So that's opposite of Dahmer because that's when the fun started for him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I think he's minimizing. It's interesting, you see the two types of killers would get all the time. You get the guys that exaggerate and guys like him that don't want you to know his inner private life. He views it as none of your business.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's none of your business that fucked these corpses. I wouldn't tell you that. That's between me and the corpses, okay?
BEN KISSEL
It does hold up in the positive sense-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's privacy.
BEN KISSEL
But the positive sense of the Long Island personality is you get the job done. So it kind of holds up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's also old America. You fucking mind your own business. You don't care what I do in my fucking backyard. Okay? Yeah I want to put in a fountain. Yeah maybe it's coming over the goddamn fence.
BEN KISSEL
You better be careful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But guess what? You gonna come over here and stop my fucking fountain?
BEN KISSEL
Be careful putting a fountain in, Henry's gonna show up and think it's a kiddie pool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a funny old bit.
BEN KISSEL
That's a true story.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Rifkin abstained from killing for four months after killing Julie Blackbird. But since his mother was going out of town more frequently, obviously enjoying this new fancy free phase in her life, Joel kept bringing sex workers back to their home on Long Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What is it about women from New York that just long for their husbands to die? They can't wait for them to die so they can be free.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not sure if it's the men or the women to blame on that one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Who's worse?
MARCUS PARKS
From what Rifkin said, he had no particular plans to kill any of the women he brought back to his house and he certainly had - well excuse me, to his mother's house, it was not Joel's house, it was his mother's house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, thank you.
BEN KISSEL
This is so much lamer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he certainly had no plans, he claimed, when he committed his next murder, that of 31 year old Barbara Jacobs. From Rifkin's memory, murder simply occurred to him in the moment and he acted. Joel said that he and Barbara were watching TV when Barbara fell asleep and while she dozed, Joel began to go back and forth as to whether he could and/or should kill her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the exact crux because everyone keeps asking, they put it on him, they're like you do this for control. And he's like no, no, no. He would insist that the women had control because that is his control mechanism. That's what people don't understand is that he viewed the women as control so him murdering them was quote unquote "him taking his control back". So he thought that he would do it and it was about the deliberation about whether or not I'm going to kill this unsuspecting person. It was about me controlling their destiny.
BEN KISSEL
You can just See him going to the old jukebox there, hitting D7, (singing) should I stay or should I go now, should I stay?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Disgusting. How dare you? Do you think that's what that song is about?
BEN KISSEL
I have no idea what that song is about, I think it's about going to the bathroom. I have no idea. But I'm sure that he did have some bizarre songs that he would play in ritual.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Probably a lot of Billy Joel.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah actually, it's gonna be a lot of Billy Joel. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And Bruce. You know Bruce is making his way in there.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think it would be Bruce, I think he's going Piano Man and then it's just piano over and over and over, he's not going Jersey. No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's Long Island, he's not Jersey. He says fuck Bruce Springsteen and he says Billy Joel. Because you know how many times he listened to moving out and it was just like, 'You hear that, Ma? Ma, you hear that? I'm gonna be doing that soon!'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah Joel. Please get out of here, Joel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually I've been doing gigs.
BEN KISSEL
Okay Joel.
MARCUS PARKS
No, if Joel Rifkin was still out, if he hadn't have gone to jail he'd be saving up money to go to those Billy Joel Madison Square Garden gigs at least once a year, like every October he goes to see Billy at the Garden.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just gotta be there because I know he's there for me.
BEN KISSEL
yeah he is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gotta be there for him.
BEN KISSEL
Oh mama.
MARCUS PARKS
Well finally when Joel was here at his mother's house with this sex worker, he decided to just do it and he struck Jacobs while she was sleeping. She immediately woke up and fought back but after they wrestled on the floor for a bit, Rifkin gained the upper hand and strangled her to death. But as to the business of dismemberment, Joel found that he either no longer had the stomach for it or most likely knew that he didn't have to actually go to the trouble. After dragging the body down to the basement as he had the last two, he said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"For some reason I could not do it. I mean I had everything to do it but you know I didn't start. I got to the point where I was ready to cut, I had the knife in my hand and I'm looking at the body and eugh, I'll come back and do this later."
BEN KISSEL
My god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The "eugh" is in the quote. Literally this is how he fucking talked. You know what I think truly? I think he's fucking lazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think that's part of it.
BEN KISSEL
That's real possible.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he starts off, I think he's always thinking about what is the mount of least resistance because he does think at first like yeah, I gotta cut up these bodies and put all the body parts in different locations.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And then the next one he's like okay, I gotta encase them in cement and put them in different locations. And then by the third one it's like fuck it, let's just throw it in the goddamn river, who gives a shit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Okay suitcase.
BEN KISSEL
So he's already getting I guess as Ted Bundy would say sometimes you lose the crowbar.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, sometimes he forgets where he put the lug nuts.
BEN KISSEL
So it seems also that it's becoming pretty blase already.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He always was.
BEN KISSEL
So he has no joy in having the corpse around. He doesn't like to dismember it, he doesn't like to have sex with it apparently although god knows what happened.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
So he's not a product killer whatsoever.
MARCUS PARKS
No, not at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a process killer.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's the thing, he's barely a process killer.
BEN KISSEL
That's the weird thing about this guy, I just don't understand why he killed all these people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's what to me actually makes him truly very frightening in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where he felt nothing, he felt absolutely nothing. He just kind of operated in his mind almost unconsciously, he was doing these things and then it became rote, he viewed it in his own mind as muscle memory. He's like now I just do this or I don't do this, this is part of the process. I mean he's not a nice guy, Kissel.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see, I see.
MARCUS PARKS
So Joel left the body in the basement for a few hours while he decided what to do and finally settled on simply dumping the body in the river. After the body was wrapped in plastic, Joel packed it in a large cardboard box, loaded it into his mother's Toyota sedan because his truck was broken down, and dumped the box in the Hudson near a cement processing plant. Immediately after dumping the body, Rifkin drove south into the city and picked up a girl in Manhattan for oral sex in the car. In his mother's sedan no less!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's got more room. It's got the handicap parking so I can really spread out back there.
BEN KISSEL
Wow so he's accelerating it sounds.
MARCUS PARKS
By the time he was done, Rifkin heard on the radio that the body he just dumped had already been found hours later.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But instead of the panic he felt before, he said the radio report didn't phase him at all and this he was actually correct in thinking that he had nothing to worry about because Barbara Jacobs body, like many others, it wasn't even identified until Joel Rifkin himself named her after his capture. Now going back to Henry's observation that Joel Rifkin only preyed on the most invisible women, the ones closest to the end of the road, I think that the murder of Barbara Jacobs reinforces that opinion. See Rifkin said that he kept bringing women back to his Long Island home for months after Julie Blackbird but he didn't kill any of them despite the fact that he killed the first two women who had stepped foot into his mother's house. Boom, one, two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think that Joel was basically interviewing these women that he brought back afterwards to see how far removed from society they really were. And when he met Jacobs, someone who had no real ties, he struck knowing that the likelihood of mere identification much less capture was extremely low.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And again remember his validation always was they were going to die anyway, they were already close.
MARCUS PARKS
Always.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was this thing, he viewed himself as I'm just finishing a job that was already done. And he's a fucking parasite.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he views himself as a guy that's walk around the food court, eating other people's half eaten meals. They're just going to be thrown away anyway so fuck it, what does it matter? That's how he thinks of it at least.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
On the night of Joel's next murder about a month and a half later, he said that the urge to kill wasn't particularly strong and that he was more interested that night in what he called window shopping. In Joel's world, Window shopping meant spending his night driving around and chatting with sex workers, basically wasting their time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it's called wasting people's time.
MARCUS PARKS
Sometimes he'd hire them on nights like this and sometimes he wouldn't. Most of the time he wouldn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I was addicted to the night! And I look at that moon up there and I said oh that looks like a big rock.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I love the night because that's when you go out there and everything's dark, it's fun in a way.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it is. It's the nighttime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like you're always surprised by your own eyeballs. I love the nighttime because I have astigmatism and I really can't see a lot as soon as it gets about 7PM.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But on the nights that Joel ventured into the city looking for company, whether he was planning to hire them or not, he had a regular route that hits some of New York City's best known strolls. Strolls by the way, those are areas in which a man had his pick of sex workers plying their trade on the street, apparently right underneath over here in Long Island City near where I am the, one of the biggest strolls in Long Island City was right underneath the Ed Koch bridge.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I'd love to go get blown under the Ed Koch bridge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing about a stroll is I always imagine it as two people holding hands on a beltway in Atlanta.
BEN KISSEL
Flipping coins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like a stroll. I guess it's better than a red light district because that's also a little too official I think for a lot of these places.
MARCUS PARKS
Well a red light district is a place with stores and people and businesses. From what it sounds like with strolls, they're empty lots, they're out of the way places, they're places where nobody else goes. They're just kind of night after night taken over by this I guess you'd call it the soft white underbelly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can we actually change it from stroll to trudge? That it's a trudge to go up there?
MARCUS PARKS
It's a trudge, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I believe that to be true.
MARCUS PARKS
Well let's take a bit of a ride along with Joel Rifkin on an average night of window shopping.
BEN KISSEL
Oh awesome, I'm so excited to be in this car with you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Cause we're living here in Allentown and they're closing all the factories down. Yeah, Billy. Cause they're shutting it down, they're shutting it down. No one can work anymore, nobody wants to work.
BEN KISSEL
Can you roll down the window, man? It's smells real bad in this car, it smells like you killed a woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my Joop. No, no, that's my Joop. Don't worry about that.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you're wearing Joop, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the first stroll Joel would hit was around the Belmont Park horse track in Queens which worked as his entrance into the five boroughs from the Hempstead Turnpike coming from Long Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
From there Joel hopped on Jamaica Avenue which is a major artery in Queens containing more multiple strolls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My fucking city, dude! That's my fucking town, dude.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh yeah, Jamaica. Yeah, Jamaica Avenue runs through half a dozen neighborhoods from Queens Village down to Woodhaven.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what made me pissed as I looked up a thing, like the most famous person from any city? Fucking Woodhaven number one famous person, Donald Trump's fucking father.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where he's from, he's Queens trash.
BEN KISSEL
It wasn't the white Klumps, aka the Zebrowski family?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah no, I'm always going to have to contend with the fact that from my home county, Haskell County, it's always going to be Rick Perry. Always.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that doesn't count, he's a douche. That doesn't work.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus fucking Christ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah.
BEN KISSEL
Stevens Point, Wisconsin. I got Robocop.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Peter Weller.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Peter Weller.
BEN KISSEL
Peter Weller, he's always gonna be number one.
MARCUS PARKS
You don't mind losing to Peter Weller.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he's Robocop. He shot a bunch of dicks off, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at Woodhaven though Jamaica Avenue meets Atlantic Avenue which bisects the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights where Joel found even more strolls on this particular five mile stretch. If nobody satisfied Joel in Brooklyn, at the end of Atlantic Avenue or at least near the end of Atlantic Avenue he'd take Flatbush Avenue north to the BQE.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! BQE baby!
BEN KISSEL
All right Henry, none of this is a compliment to you. These are roads, most of which have massive potholes and are difficult to navigate.
MARCUS PARKS
Atlantic Avenue is the worst fucking street to drive down in New York City, it's awful. I hate Atlantic Avenue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love that, that's my fucking city dude.
BEN KISSEL
No you don't. You don't even love it.
MARCUS PARKS
No it's not. I lived over there fucking in Bed-Stuy off Atlantic Avenue for five fucking years. You didn't live over there. You didn't live there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't want to cause I grew up there and I knew what it's was like. But this is the thing is you guys have never been to see again Billy Joel at MSG because he breaks down when he's doing New York State of Mind, he calls out all the counties and places from Queens and Brooklyn and everyone just goes, 'Oh! That's where I'm from! I'm from Howard Beach!'
BEN KISSEL
Man, you really can't get that Queens trash out of the Queens boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not wearing any clothes right now.
BEN KISSEL
We know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well out of Downtown Brooklyn, Joel would get on the BQE, he'd take it up north to the Williamsburg Bridge, he'd take the Williamsburg Bridge across directly into Manhattan, which is where the majority of the women he murdered were picked up.
BEN KISSEL
You know what Henry, I actually have to apologize because as soon as Marcus said Williamsburg Bridge I was like now that's my town! I was there 15 years! Williamsburg Bridge, I used to bike - no, I never biked, I used to walk over it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, you used to look at it from an Uber.
BEN KISSEL
I used to look at it. I get it, now there's a little pride that goes with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah man, yeah, we already went past Bed-Stuy, that was mine. But that's the thing, once he got into Manhattan there was a whole new network of strolls to go past. He'd start in the Lower East Side near the foot of the bridge at a stroll on Allen and Forsyth, right there where the Lower East Side starts turning into Chinatown. Then if he didn't see anything he liked there, he'd turn north to 42nd Street and find a stroll a couple of avenues away from Times Square near Port Authority.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ew.
BEN KISSEL
Yikes.
MARCUS PARKS
It's getting real dark now.
BEN KISSEL
Yes it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Real dark.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Finally he'd loop back south near the Javits Convention Center on the west side, which that's where Comic Con is every year. I didn't know Javits Center used to be a huge stroll for sex workers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's where you used to get fucking shot in the head dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All of these places were really, really rough during this time period and he'd do this same circle every night.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. So he had like a circuit.
MARCUS PARKS
Well not necessarily every night but when he had gas money, he'd fucking do it. It's this huge circuit. Then after Javits Center, he'd cut back down Manhattan and then he'd go back to the East Village across 1st and 2nd avenues for a couple of more strolls. And finally if he found no one of interest or no one within his meager price range, he'd hit the Jamaica Avenue stroll in Queens one last time before heading home.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
This entire trip he said, like this entire circuit would be about four hours.
BEN KISSEL
I was gonna say that takes forever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's how he spent his whole night.
MARCUS PARKS
He's doing it in the middle of the night, there's no traffic at that time you can probably make that full circuit not stopping in an hour, hour and a half, probably an hour and a half.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
But he stopped a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't the term edging or gooning? There's a term about you build yourself up to just being hard for a long period of time.
BEN KISSEL
Gooning?
MARCUS PARKS
Edging.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's what he'd do. That's kind of what he would do and he was just as into the interview stage, we talked about this. It was weird of all of the killers, it's really never been about the sex, it's about he felt like he was a known quantity in all of these places where everybody else he was just an annoying fuck. They just looked at him, everybody hated him in this direct area but then he'd show up there and he'd be big man on campus.
BEN KISSEL
Right, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. Actually I also don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
I would argue that not everyone did hate him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There's so many people that every once in a while he'd connect with someone because there was no shortage of people that would say like yeah, I knew Joel, he was fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was fine.
MARCUS PARKS
He's fine.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah I fucked Joel. I fucked Joel a couple of times, I blew Joel a couple of times. Fine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's fine.
BEN KISSEL
Fine guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, Mr. Anderson.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to fuck him all the time, he was fine. Good guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a good guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah well for that stroll that's over on the east side, that's 53rd and 3rd, that's a whole different-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's where The Ramones were.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah that's where Dee Dee was, that's where Robert Mapplethorpe was a time or two when he was in his phase, there was a lot of stuff going on 53rd and 3rd but that's also in the 70s, it's a whole different time period.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
But even though the Queens stroll was Joel Rifkin's, sorry Henry, it was his least favorite stroll, the Queens stroll was his least favorite.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, what are you gonna do?
MARCUS PARKS
It was here on September 1, 1991 that Joel picked up the next woman he would murder, Mary Ellen De Luca. Now Mary Ellen suffered from addiction like many of the women Joel killed. So therefore Joel claimed that before they were able to do any business, he had to drive around with her for 10 hours looking for her drug of choice which highly annoyed Joel. I also don't know if this is true because I do not believe it would take you 10 hours to find any drug in New York City in 1991. Maybe 10 minutes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's just an asshole. I think that this is really he got mad that she was making him drive around. And he had this thing too because how do we talk about it? He set up these factors that he then would make it quote unquote "inevitable" for him to kill the people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just being like she's not respecting me, she's not respecting my time. We're here doing this thing and then she wants to go run around and do all this stuff. He always has these excuse of why this one had to be murdered.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But on this occasion Joel, perhaps emboldened by the fact that he killed three women and hadn't come close to an investigation, he stepped outside of his comfort zone for the first time. Instead of taking De Luca back to his mother's house, he brought her to a seedy motel in a strip mall in Long Island a few miles from his home in East Meadow. Now after Mary Ellen scored some drugs, Joel rented a room. But De Luca said that she needed to get high before they got down to business. But once they did, Joel claimed that she acted bored and kept asking are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Over and over and over again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean I don't know if Joel was a regular Peter North.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know if this is really the time to explain to have a romantic encounter.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This of course agitated Joel if it is indeed true. But I do actually think that what came next might well have at least a kernel of truth and if it is true, it's about the saddest fucking serial killer story I've ever heard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the first time I would put a trigger warning for how sad this is.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredibly sad. Joel said that after the sex, De Luca kept going on and on about how much she hated life and how she just wanted it to be over. And after Joel said he asked her several times if she wanted to die and after she said yes each time, Joel climbed on top of her and strangled her without a second thought. Rifkin said that while he was strangling her, De Luca did nothing and simply accepted it, making her allegedly the only one who didn't resist. In other words it sounds to me as if De Luca died from suicide by serial killer just as someone might die from suicide by cop.
BEN KISSEL
Dang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then again you never really know with Joel because he's so full of shit.
BEN KISSEL
He's a serial killer?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's what I mean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not the most reliable source.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe not, maybe not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But there's something that he said because again it's all about he had a very distinctly photographic memory about each one these encounters because he'd replay it over and over and over and over again. And I think in a way it kind of in his thing, it was like that was a good one I did because I ended her misery. He acted like that where he was like she asked for it and I delivered, I did what she needed. And it's just obviously the worst.
BEN KISSEL
It's sort of the Season of the Witch for his little VHS collection. It doesn't really fit into the Halloween lore, it stands alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh so you're comparing this murder to Halloween III which I actually really enjoy, I enjoy Halloween III.
BEN KISSEL
It's just not Halloween, that was the problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So this one doesn't really fit in with his with his overall theme.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking bastard.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, wow. It just seems like a lot of people were really sad back then. Maybe they still are but...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I look at pictures from my childhood and no one is smiling. And I don't remember the whole years of it and it's like no one is happy. I remember getting my starter jacket, when I got the giant starter jacket. I remember being happy then.
BEN KISSEL
That's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember getting the Ghostbusters firehouse, I was happy then.
BEN KISSEL
That's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Which team was the starter jacket? Was it Knicks? Mets?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
New York Giants.
MARCUS PARKS
Giants.
BEN KISSEL
Giants! Okay cool, cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Not bad, not bad.
BEN KISSEL
It holds up. It does. I got the Apex jacket for the Washington Football Club.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
What are they called now? The Commanders?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's called The Commandants or something. I think they're the Washington DC Caterers now. It's incredible, at least they're honoring caterers and how hard they work.
BEN KISSEL
That would be nice.
MARCUS PARKS
But either way after the murder Joel, inspired again by the Hitchcock movie Frenzy, he drove to Kmart and bought a steamer trunk to dispose of De Luca's body just as the killer in the movie had done. But since this was Joel's first murder outside his own home, he was a little awkward about it and figured that he needed to make a show to the motel clerk who most likely barely registered Joel's existence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you know how many people went in there to murder sex workers?
BEN KISSEL
Seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's seen it. You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
He's seen it all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he acted like he needed to be Mr. Bean or something, like I'm gonna have to sneak my way out of here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, dog and pony show.
BEN KISSEL
It's a seedy hotel attached to a strip mall.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I can't imagine that anyone that goes and spends the night doesn't die.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Rifkin brought pieces of empty luggage besides the steamer trunk, he brought them in and out of the room again and again and again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where's he going? He's going on the fucking Polar Express? Why is he bringing trunks of luggage like he's Madame Blavatsky traveling from fucking India to the United States?
marcus parks
He's bringing in suitcases, he's bringing in backpacks just back and forth. I guess he's trying to confuse the clerk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I forgot I got my suit bags and oh my trombone case!
MARCUS PARKS
And finally in the middle of all this to mix it up he brings the steamer trunk with the body inside past the front desk. He then goes back and has a whole conversation with the clerk about yeah, I'm just moving some stuff upstate, you know me, that's what I'm doing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm actually the new DA.
MARCUS PARKS
New DA at Rockland County, that's me. I'm just moving upstate, that's what I'm doing.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Meanwhile the clerk is like just kill her and get her out of here. Yes, I have another victim coming through.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you need help with this body? Sir, do you need help with the body?
BEN KISSEL
Seriously. I'm an overnight clerk at a strip mall hotel.
MARCUS PARKS
And as it was, Joel did indeed move the body upstate. He drove the corpse up near West Point and left the body at a picnic area near a hot dog truck but kept the steamer trunk so he could use it again in the future. And even though De Luca's family did look for her, police upstate didn't make the connection because of the massive amount of bodies popping up in and around New York City.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
West Point ain't that far from here. Therefore Mary Ellen De Luca was buried as a Jane Doe and wasn't identified again until Rifkin confessed in 1993.
BEN KISSEL
Also for those wondering what a steamer trunk is, no it is not a trunk just full of other people's farts. It is the thing that has all of your family quilts in it. Cause I was like what the fuck is a steamer trunk?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's what we had.
BEN KISSEL
It's that, just so you all know.
MARCUS PARKS
If I were to think a steamer trunk in a dirty way I would think it was a trunk full of turds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Full of poops.
MARCUS PARKS
Turds, yeah. But fully formed turds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Long ones.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah now that I'm on probiotics it's so nice.
BEN KISSEL
So nice.
MARCUS PARKS
So nice. So long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One tube, I get one tube coiled.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that fantastic? I love the Colgate-like asshole that you've currently developed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It comes out like a star. Is that bad?
BEN KISSEL
That's horrible. Horrible actually, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now concerning Joel's quote unquote "urge to kill", he downplayed everything about it saying that it was a small percentage of his daily life. Particularly he said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Hey, there's no transmorphing into a werewolf or anything like that like the psychs and the prosecutors want to portray. To use a cliché it was kind of like a bolt of lightning or whatever, it was that element. I mean it's just random choice."
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna say if like 10% of your day is like, 'I want to kill!' That's a lot, that's still a bunch of time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, come on. I have a busy life. I gotta go pretend to run a lawn mowing business. Then I gotta listen on my mother saying, 'Go get cold cuts at the store!'
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. So yeah, I took a little mental vacation every day. So now you're gonna sue me? You're gonna fucking arrest me because I'm taking a little thought vacation?
BEN KISSEL
It was the murders. It's mostly the murders.
MARCUS PARKS
I really wish I could do math because you're awake for what, most people are awake for what, 18 hours a day, 16 hours a day, something like that?
BEN KISSEL
16, 18. Something like that, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, 16, 18. And if you're thinking about murder for 2% of that, I wonder how many minutes that is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, 18x60=1080.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think this is gonna work, Henry.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it works.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
108 minutes a day.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot of time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So one too long horror movie is your life.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while Joel maintains that staving off the urge to murder wasn't that big of a deal during the first five murders, the urge increased exponentially with each one as it often does with serial killers, it's the law of diminishing returns. In fact Joel actually gave himself credit for not murdering anyone in the weeks after De Luca's death, even though he really, really wanted to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Somebody gave me credit. Come on, come on! It was back in the day because I knew like those Snackwell's cookies man, they're diet cookies but I'll eat a whole sleeve in one go.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh. That's bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I think it's a lot of styrofoam. I think that's where microplastics started.
MARCUS PARKS
But as he later said, his willpower would eventually wane and he compared his eventual weakening to something as mundane as breaking a New Year's resolution. He said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Resolutions with the full intention of like, yes, this here's my last cigarette or I'm going to exercise every day. And you exercise for about two weeks, three weeks and then you stop. You find an excuse and you start again for one or two more days."
MARCUS PARKS
That's how he saw serial killing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how it is. That's just how it is.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? It's like I gotta fucking cut down on my candy intake and take the next thing I know I'm killing another woman.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, named Candy perhaps. Yeah I don't think that these things are really equivalent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's full of shit.
BEN KISSEL
If you accidentally have a cigarette... Oh he's full of shit. I see.
MARCUS PARKS
But the more that Joel murdered, the easier it was to commit the act. And the next victim, Yun Lee was actually someone that Joel sort of knew and had visited multiple times. This murder, Joel said, was the only one he regretted because he actually liked her. But that's the thing, I don't think that he regretted killing her because he liked her, I think he regretted killing her because he couldn't go to her anymore, he couldn't pay her for sex anymore because she's dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
He's a fucking idiot and didn't realize.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Joel that they first drove to a parking lot to do business but when Joel couldn't get an erection, he blamed it on there being too many people around with too much happening. I can't get hard, there's too many people.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't get hard!
BEN KISSEL
When Marcus says business of course this was the invention of Krispy Kreme. And what they were able to do with the donut to make it so soft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the first investors meeting.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But when they went to a different location to no avail when it came to an erection, Joel strangled Lee simply because he was agitated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He said also, he didn't blame Lee, he was like, 'Well I just had gotten a blowjob two hours before.' And he couldn't do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then it's also weird. He also said, this is weird, he said when he was strangling her she said, and this is real, she mouthed you're making a big mistake, this is a big mistake. And in his mind he was like maybe that's because she liked me. That was his response. It was like maybe it's because she's sad about losing me, her favorite customer.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, it's because she liked you.
MARCUS PARKS
It's all about him.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, Joel. I don't think that's the case, buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a good customer.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know if that's true. It seems like you're strangling this woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every Dunkin' in the tristate area knows me. They know what I like. I like tuna. I don't like any of the bread, I just like a cup of it.
BEN KISSEL
You get tuna from a Dunkin' Donuts?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I like a nice hot cup of coffee with it.
BEN KISSEL
You get Dunkin' Donuts tuna?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, buddy.
BEN KISSEL
Tuna and hot coffee. Oh mama.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I call that the Lieutenant Special.
BEN KISSEL
That is absolutely disgusting.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the worst fucking... Can you imagine sitting down on the train next to a guy with a fucking cup of tuna and hot coffee?
BEN KISSEL
Hot coffee.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after killing Yun Lee he drove the body back to East Meadow, still lying in the passenger seat, to a lot Joel had rented. See even though Joel had been having a bear of a time finding a job following his firing from Record World, he had tried to start a landscaping business of a sort.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Once you own four lawnmowers, the business begins itself.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then it turns out it doesn't.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he was very bad. I don't know if you guys guessed that he might be extremely bad at running a business.
BEN KISSEL
At lawn care? Yeah I could see that not working out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's incredibly difficult work. It's hard work.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't just be a lazy fuck. You do the work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He just didn't show up. He just wouldn't show up to mow people's fucking lawns. That's what the guy from the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble said is that they hired him, he just wouldn't come up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(scatting) I'm sorry, let me put my trumpet down because it's so important. (trumpet sounds) I just wanted to show you again what I do.
MARCUS PARKS
(trumpet sounds)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I do. Look at my shirt. He actually is also wearing the shirt in the thing.
MARCUS PARKS
That's my favorite part is that he's wearing the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble shirt during the interview. He's just gotta make sure, gotta pump it, always be pumping it, always be hustling bro, always.
BEN KISSEL
No press is bad press.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause my thing is I wish y'all could learn the lesson that ska teaches us all. If you don't show up, nobody's gonna skank for you.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta be the skank in your group, you gotta start the skanking.
MARCUS PARKS
But nevertheless Joel found a way to turn the lot that was supposed to be for a career into something for his hobby. See the lot had a storage shed which was where Joel had stored the steamer trunk he'd used to transport the body of Mary Ellen De Luca. Once Joel arrived at the shed he put the steamer trunk into the bed, carried Yun Lee's body from the front seat, placed it in the trunk, and drove it to a rocky hillside in the South Bronx. There Joel tossed the trunk into the Harlem River near what was then the Triborough Bridge but is now the RFK, even though everyone still calls it the fucking Triborough Bridge.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause it is the Triborough Bridge.
MARCUS PARKS
It always fucking will be the Triborough Bridge, always will be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Always will be.
MARCUS PARKS
You know there's still one sign that I know some asshole just refuses to replace.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Just one sign that still says Triborough Bridge.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. RFK. I never liked bridges that are named after people who died in tragedy. It just seems like a bad omen. But I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I want it to just be successful people.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like I'm gonna have a real hard time if we ever have like a Kobe Bryant Bridge, you know what I mean? It needs to be somebody who died in his sleep at 99.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm starting to thin this old guy, the old chimney sweep fella there, he's 98, he's got a young girlfriend, she's 70. What's the name of that dude? Got the old skeleton teeth. He's still around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I could just from your Bud Light description of Dick Van Dyke-
BEN KISSEL
Dick Van Dyke!
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, wow. That one did not...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One of the biggest entertainers in history.
BEN KISSEL
The Dick Van Dyke dyke. That would be good, it actually works.
MARCUS PARKS
It does. No, no, no, give me a Major Deegan anyday. Just a man.
BEN KISSEL
Major Deegan?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that Major Deegan Expressway, it's up near the RFK into the Bronx. You get off the RFK and you get on the Major Deegan Expressway, it's how you get out of the city, get upstate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We need the Betty White Desalinization Center.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that would be great, get the salt out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get the salt out.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon though Lee's body came free from the trunk and floated downstream where it was fished out of the water between East 123rd Street and Randall's Island, not too far from the dumping site. Now after Lee the gloves were off when it came to how casually Rifkin killed women. Where his first few murders were remembered in detail, Joel doesn't even remember the name of the sixth woman he killed, picked up at the stroll near Port Authority on 46th and 8th. Number six as she's still known today was killed quickly and without even the pretension of provocation and her body was stored in the landscaping lot under a tarp for later disposal. After Joel went home and took a nap, he returned that afternoon to stuff the corpse into a 55 gallon drum from a recycling plant which was the method that would supplant his previous disposal MO for the next few murders.
BEN KISSEL
I mean he acts like me after eating too much barbecue.
MARCUS PARKS
Totally.
BEN KISSEL
He just goes to take a nap just like nothing, like I didn't just murder this woman.
MARCUS PARKS
I'll take care of it later.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really feels nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you know what Ben? That's pretty astute observation because he sees it with the same weight as I'll do the dishes in the morning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Especially now I realize especially after watching that interview with him with the FBI guy, I think he did it for the fantasy. It's the opposite, it's like he doesn't do it to have the body, he doesn't do it because he loves the act of murder necessarily, I think he does love the act of murder and he doesn't like to talk about it too much. I think he likes the power he gets.
BEN KISSEL
Right, he must.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think he likes it for the video play afterwards in his brain.
MARCUS PARKS
He likes it because he's a man who kills.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm that guy.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm that guy, yeah. I'm a murderer. It's like you people don't know this about me, I'm a murderer, I kill people easy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a crazy guy.
MARCUS PARKS
You can fuck with me all you want but what you don't know is that I could kill you at any moment because I've killed somebody else.
BEN KISSEL
Well I don't think you could kill me, I'm a grown man. It doesn't seem like he really preyed upon people-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No he could only kill you if you're very sick.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He literally will only kill a very sick woman very late at night.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's a security blanket. That's all it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
After putting the body in the drum, he drove both back to the South Bronx to a spot where people routinely abandoned cars and unusable parts from local chop shops. And here is where Joel almost got caught for the first and only time until he was arrested. Just after Rifkin pushed the 55 gallon drum containing a murder victim into the water, he turned around to see two cops who were responding to a call that someone was doing illegal dumping. Thinking quickly Joel said, 'I ain't dumping, I'm scavenging.' That's what he said. He's like, 'I'm not dumping, I'm scavenging. Technically I'm clearing the litter.'
BEN KISSEL
You don't know this yet but there's a movie that's gonna come out called WALL-E. I am like WALL-E. You don't know that yet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm like that guy. But you could see the two cops just looking at this fucking shmool as he's like, 'You know me!' They're like, 'Oh yeah, that's what you're doing?' And he's like, listen, this is the excuse he gave to the cops. 'I just lie so much truly, I lie so much, I'm a scavenger, this is what I do. So I forget what I'm doing half the time.'
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then when the cops were kind of dubious about it, he picked up a fucking old axle that someone had thrown away and he said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I can get about $30 for this."
MARCUS PARKS
Like he just starts picking shit up and naming prices.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got this here, I got this old shoe, I can give this to my girlfriend. Oh look at this fish skeleton, scary, scary. You could put that in a horror museum.
BEN KISSEL
It's like if Ed Gein produced American Pickers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, I can get 20 bucks for that. But how do you even get a 55 gallon drum?
MARCUS PARKS
He stole it from a recycling plant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he stole it.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so the cops not wanting to deal with this obvious pain in the ass, they just suggested Rifkin go scavenge elsewhere. They just gave him a 'get out of here'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get outta here!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Nailed it again.
MARCUS PARKS
After that Rifkin felt even more emboldened and got even riskier as to where he picked up future victims. Number seven was 28 year old Lorraine Orvieto who was found in Bay Shore, Long Island much closer to Joel's home. And if you'll notice I'm being very good about saying Long-guy-land every single time, I want to make sure our Long-guy-landers out there appreciate it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, thank you. Like our editor, Rob.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So big ups, Rob. Good work not killing anybody.
BEN KISSEL
Long-guy-land.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good work having a constructive life.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
After Joel killed this woman in an empty schoolyard during sex, he rifled through her purse only to find a bottle of AZT which was an early drug used to treat HIV. This I think is where we find one of the most baffling aspects of the Joel Rifkin story. See even though he never used a condom during oral sex and only wore a condom if a sex worker asked him to, which is incredible considering how he murdered 17 of them, he'd put on a condom if she asked, he never caught HIV himself from the hundreds of high risk sex workers he slept with. What's even more incredible is that while he did test positive for hepatitis, the free clinic he visited called him up a few days later to tell him that they'd mixed up his test results with someone else which is good for Joel but terrible for the person who thought they didn't have hepatitis.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. That's why I'm invisible.
BEN KISSEL
Invisible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm teflon. These STDs, they show up and it's just like my penis itself says, 'Get outta here. You can't handle me.'
BEN KISSEL
If this entire series which ends with this episode ends with him being enshrined in the Science Hall of Fame for having the only blood that can cure all STDs, I'm going to be really upset if it's just him next to that statue of a mouse.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean he got the clap often.
BEN KISSEL
Oh he did, okay great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he had upstairs downstairs herpes forever. Yeah. He did not dodge that bullet, he just dodged the fatal bullet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had breakfast nook herpes.
BEN KISSEL
I got it.
MARCUS PARKS
Wait breakfast nook herpes? What the fuck is that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All the way, every nook and cranny.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, like Lindsey Graham and his ladybugs.
MARCUS PARKS
But regardless of Joel Rifkin's undeserved luck, he disposed of both Lorraine Orvieto's and the body of the next woman he killed using those same 55 gallon oil drums and he dumped both near Coney Island. So he's dumping bodies everywhere.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's dumping them in Coney Island, he's dumping them upstate, he's dumping in the South Bronx, he's throwing them in the East River. That's part of what makes it so difficult for the cops to see there's a serial killer here because it's all over the city. And even outside of the city and in Jersey, it's fucking everywhere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's already so many murders a year that it's all blending together and this is when he's fully in his aggressive berserk mode where he's just going out every night and doing it in real quick succession.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And these aren't the only sex workers showing up dead in New York City, he's not the only one doing this. For his next murder though Rifkin returned to Manhattan and picked up 25 year old Iris Sanchez who was driven down to one of the spots where the Macy's fireworks are set off every fourth of July. And after the subsequent murder, Rifkin started driving back to East Meadow with the body but instead of taking her all the way, Joel decided to emulate the Green River Killer and dumped the body near the airport, in this case JFK.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
Was it an 'ugh' just because you don't like JFK or an 'ugh' because he's emulating the Green River Killer?
BEN KISSEL
Copycat.
MARCUS PARKS
Copycat.
BEN KISSEL
Also rule applies. RFK, JFK. No. No airports.
MARCUS PARKS
That's why I prefer LaGuardia cause he's a good mayor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A real mayor! A real mayor!
MARCUS PARKS
After driving into a vacant lot, Rifkin found a discarded mattress and simply hid the body underneath and just left it there.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my God.
MARCUS PARKS
When he got home though he was met with quite an irate mother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All of you think that the cops are scary or what I do scary, you ain't never met Mrs. Rifkin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh you better not. I mean I once used a doily, I had to clean up all his blood, right? I used this oily to do it.
BEN KISSEL
The good doily.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My mother, she wouldn't even let it go. She was like, 'Where's my doily?' And I was just like, 'Ma! It doesn't even protect the table!'
MARCUS PARKS
Well apparently Joel had ditched his shift at a liquor store where he had been hired part time and his boss had been calling because it was a particularly busy Mother's Day weekend which seems odd because I've never thought of Mother's Day as a hard liquor holiday.
BEN KISSEL
You never had a mom from Long Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I suppose so.
BEN KISSEL
We can't keep this Franzia in stock. Goddamnit, is it Mother's Day weekend or something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I forgot also to mention and speaking of jobs, you know that Baba Booey said he worked with Joel Rifkin at the record store.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What? Baba Booey, Baba Booey! Wow. From the Howard Stern show there.
MARCUS PARKS
But regardless when Joel went to finish out the shift at the liquor store after a long night of murder, he did so with a ring, a watch, and a bracelet taken from Iris Sanchez's corpse stuffed in his pocket.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps the most incredible fact of this entire tale though is that what seems like Iris' body would be found immediately, it stayed in that vacant lot under that mattress for well over a year until Joel Rifkin led police to the dumping site himself.
BEN KISSEL
What? We don't know, no Officer Pastrami, we don't want to look under that mattress that obviously looks like it has a corpse underneath it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. You see that mattress right there? That's 12 hours of paperwork.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Leave the mattress.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Leave it there.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
That's still the fucking deal in New York City. If you try to report a crime to a cop he will actively try to get you to not report it so he doesn't have to do the fucking paperwork.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like the insurance company.
BEN KISSEL
He's gonna make you confess to the crime.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you do it?
BEN KISSEL
Did you do it then? So you must have done it then, it seems like you have a lot of information on this crime. It's interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It happened to me. I am the one that received the crime.
BEN KISSEL
You know a lot about this crime, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When I got knockout gamed and I went to the cops and the two kids that beat me up, I went up and I told the cops that I got punched in the back of the head and the cop was like, 'You know how it is with these kids. If they're not fucking, they're beating the shit out of people.'
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was like that's it?
BEN KISSEL
That was it. Thank you. Just the worst is when the cop is like I could see why they would do that to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at you! Turn around, turn around. And then he goes and the other guy grabs his arm and is just like, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it was an accident.'
MARCUS PARKS
But concerning Iris Sanchez, Rifkin said that while he murdered her with what he considered to be a fair amount of skill, he still maintained that he killed her quote "efficiently by accident". See Rifkin true to form couldn't even feel good about himself as a serial killer and complained that sometimes it was too hard.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna fucking kill this man. I hate-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what it is about this little bitch is that you know what he wanted? I really do believe this. He kept saying like, 'I was never really good at it.' And I think that what he literally wanted was for Mladinich to go like, 'No, I think you were really good, Joel.'
BEN KISSEL
Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he wanted to hear like, 'No Joel, you're one of the best.' But no one would give him that, would they?
MARCUS PARKS
No, they wouldn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Well talking to Mladinich, Joel again brought his non existent athletic abilities into the mix saying that while he should have gotten better at the act of killing throughout his career, he just didn't. He then went on to compare himself to Tiger Woods who had recently come out of a slump at the time of Joel's interview.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Rifkin said that when Woods went in his slump-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Golf is mental when it starts in the body.
BEN KISSEL
No, you have nothing in common with Tiger Woods, absolutely nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We both had very inspiring fathers.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nike would have dropped my sponsorship by now.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that is true, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Rifkin said that when Woods went into his slump, Tiger spent two years practicing his swing over and over again until he returned to form. But Rifkin complain that because he couldn't consistently practice strangling women to death, he never quote "got good at it".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I tried to do it to myself but next thing I know I'm asleep, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I look at my mother and I was just like, 'I love you, Ma. I can't do anything to you, Ma. She's free. She's gonna go do the Outlander tour in Scotland.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's exciting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gonna go do an erotica tour.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that'll be really fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I went and I got a melon and I was trying to squeeze it, it's just no the same.
BEN KISSEL
You know for a fact his mom used to get quite wet thinking about Lorenzo Lamas in Renegade.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think you get wet thinking about Lorenzo Lamas.
BEN KISSEL
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
But no matter his supposed skill level, Rifkin murdered two more women in quick succession picked up from Queens and the Lower East Side. Then he took a job at a temp agency that placed him at a camera warehouse in Long Island.
BEN KISSEL
How many times do we meet killers every day? Because all of these jobs, you never know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never know.
MARCUS PARKS
You never know.
BEN KISSEL
God.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean the one that made me really think about that was him in the liquor store holding the bracelet of the woman he just killed in his fucking pocket.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
How many people, like some guy that you just pay 5 bucks to for a sandwich and he just fucking strangled someone to death.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and he's just a miserable fuck at his job and he's bad at it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? It's like that guy you think would be a serial killer might just be one.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah. Seems like they don't really excel at much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No. There at the camera warehouse, Rifkin worked with a high school acquaintance named Michael Brown and the two eventually became friendly after Brown began giving Rifkin rides to work when his truck broke down. Surprisingly Rifkin and Brown had a fairly normal work buddy relationship, having lunch together, occasionally they'd meet up for happy hour after shifts. And this is why I think Rifkin is so full of shit when it comes to his interactions with other people and how much everyone hated him cause there are plenty of people that are just like, 'He's fine. He was fine.' But he just didn't live that special life, that special perfect life that he felt like he deserved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Brown would ask Rifkin, 'Hey, what did you do over the weekend?' Rifkin stayed vague, only saying quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Oh nothing. Just hung out."
MARCUS PARKS
That's it.
BEN KISSEL
Where'd you hang out at?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Around. With people I know.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, like a park or did you go watch the Mets?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On Friday night I hung out. Saturday day I stood, I went to a place and I stood in one place about 8 hours.
BEN KISSEL
You mostly stood there? Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I hung out.
BEN KISSEL
You watch the Mets game at all?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sunday I was around.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Doing various things and attending to various objects with various personas.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Great.
MARCUS PARKS
Well other than that the only red flag Rifkin showed was that when his truck wasn't broke down, he would never let anyone inside and he always made sure to park as far away as possible from the rest of the staff. But speaking of cars, Rifkin, just like he'd been with talking about Record World, he showed no emotion in talking about his next and 13th victim but he got very upset when he recounted that the gearshift lever had been bent during the murder.
BEN KISSEL
I can't believe you hurt my truck while I was strangling you to death. did It's like yeah, fuck you dude.
MARCUS PARKS
It wasn't about blaming her for hurting the truck, it was that he had an inconvenience to deal with.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
The gearshift was bent and so he couldn't put it into drive. Well he could put it into drive, it was just really hard to put it into drive.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, I hate this.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was going to be an inconvenience to him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's kind of what he said too was that was the only time he felt anything was those moments.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said that Mladinich asked him like does the killing make you feel alive? And he's just like, 'It's not about being alive, it's about being aware, a heightened sense of smell, color, feeling. You know even when a guy like Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in a year-'
BEN KISSEL
You're not Mark McGwire! You're not Tiger Woods, Joel. No you're not!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You remember one or two of them as being like the ultimate home run, you know what I mean? But you know it's kind of a sense, it's like you know when the car wouldn't start, that's like a heightened sense of awareness.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, this guy really put himself on a pedestal, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
He did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But also put himself down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And additionally as Mary Catherine Williams was Rifkin's 13th victim, Joel got superstitious and got rid of the body as fast as he could, dumping her in the woods near an industrial park in Yorktown. However even though Joel was nervous about this murder-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you think he would have done the thing like they do in hotels and just not have named it his 13th victim?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, just skipped it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just been like 14.
MARCUS PARKS
However even though Joel was nervous about this murder, he kept a large wicker basket full of costume jewelry that Williams dragged around with her which led police to believe upon searching Joel's room that there were potentially hundreds of victims. But while hundreds of victims sounds a bit ridiculous, it's not the most out of the world notion. The body of the next woman Rifkin killed, Jenny Soto, was dumped at almost the same exact place where Rifkin had dumped Yun Lee's body in the South Bronx. But while the cops did admittedly investigate that murder, they didn't even think about the possibility of a serial killer and instead did their best to pin Jenny Soto's death on her boyfriend, an aspiring rapper lost to the sands of time named Popcorn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Detective Popcorn voice) You know how it is, you gotta rap yourself in a buttery way. If I don't make it in music, I'm going to the police academy. That's where I'm going. That's where I need to be.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna do great. One day you're gonna be a detective. You're gonna be a detective one day, Popcorn.
MARCUS PARKS
Popcorn, did you ever make a mixtape or anything like that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Detective Popcorn voice) yeah, you gotta check it out, hot fire. You like mixtapes? $10. I put it in your hand, bitch. I put it in your hand, you fucking bitch. Give me that money.
BEN KISSEL
All right, here's your $10. I actually don't want the CD.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Detective Popcorn voice) Gimme the money!
BEN KISSEL
Here's the money.
MARCUS PARKS
If you ever visit New York City and someone tries to hand you a CD, run away, do not take it from him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hands in the air!
MARCUS PARKS
Hand in the air, hands in the pocket. Do not take the mix CD from the man, he will demand money from you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know who also fucking does that? Those motherfucking Buddhists. They hand you that gold card and then they hold it, like they give you for good luck and they're like donation, donation? Oh I thought you were fucking one with everything. I thought we were all just atoms, bro.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And if a guy bumps into you and it comes up to you and says that you made him drop his glasses, he did not drop his glasses, he brought some fucking reading glasses from CVS and he's trying to scam you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's scamming you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if a guy's got his gun in your mouth, if you've got a gun in your fucking mouth, make sure you stick your tongue in the hole cause it'll stop the bullet.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very useful.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. No problem.
MARCUS PARKS
But since Jenny Soto was physically the hardest woman to murder out of all of them to the point where Joel had to break her neck, he slowed down for a few weeks until February of 1993 when he picked up Leah Evans. Evans as it turned out was not a lost soul like so many others killed by Rifkin. She was the daughter of a Manhattan civil court judge and it's thought that her night with Rifkin might have been her first ever as a sex worker. From what Rifkin claimed, Leah stopped Joel in the middle of the act and asked to drive her to a friend's house. And Joel said that since she made him feel uncomfortable, he strangled her to death. But perhaps because Joel got the feeling that she wasn't like all the others, which tells you that he was getting far more relaxed about his victim type, he buried her in a shallow grave. The only time he ever buried someone he killed.
BEN KISSEL
Garden of Bones.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But as it turned out that shallow grave was very shallow, one might say lazily shallow. And almost three months later, a couple on a nature hike saw Leah Evans' hand sticking out of the ground.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Invisible. Invisible!
MARCUS PARKS
Still painted with red nail polish. Despite her more elevated background though she also wasn't identified until Joel was caught. But on the other hand, that also had to do with the fact that Joel was very, very near to getting captured. Speaking of being brazen, Rifkin was not only getting more careless with his victim type but also where he killed, who was around while he was doing it, and how long he waited before getting rid of the evidence. Case in point in terms of all three was the last murder Joel Rifkin committed, that of 22 year old Tiffany Bresciani. See Bresciani had been a performer at one of New York City's sex emporiums, The Big Top Lounge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, that's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Which at one point had actual carousel horses ridden by topless dancers.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, I just feel like these places must have been so fun. I know everybody was scared there and there was a lot of problems and violence but I do feel like like that's fun. Like the idea of a sex show.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna tell you this. I don't know if it was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I went to a place called Dino's Bikini Bar. It was near MSG, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I know exactly what you're talking about.
BEN KISSEL
And then I slowly but surely found out that A) the girls weren't allowed to speak, B) none of them were from here, and then I just kind of found out that I think they were all being trafficked. Then it was shut down about six months later with a lot of red tape.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want a fun, safe environment where you could go, they do fun things.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know if the booby emporium-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Jumbo's Clown Room is really great in LA, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where it's like you go and it's like a show, it's really fun. That sounds cool. I like a show. I like to go there and they're singing. I like to go there and you see the talent, they can do some impressions, show their boobies.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know what you like and that's why I don't think you'd enjoy that, the event I think.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's always the floors. The floors are always in really bad shape in those places.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah that's the biggest problem, yeah. Floors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The janitorial staff are asleep, that's the problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Floors tell you a lot about a place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm serious!
BEN KISSEL
No, I believe it. I believe it, yeah. That's why I only go to strip clubs with marble floors, it's fun to watch everyone fall down and it's all slippery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Falling into tits.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah I went to this one place, one of the last porno shops in subway stations on 42nd and 8th when I worked over there. Yeah, I went there with a boss once who asked me to go there after work one day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Work was different back in the day, guys.
BEN KISSEL
It wasn't back in the day, that was 2010!
MARCUS PARKS
2006. It was 2006. That's the thing is we both lived in Harlem and we would take the train home together. And then one day he was like, 'I gotta run a little errand before I go home, you wanna go with me?'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was trying to have sex with you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah he was definitely trying to have sex with you. What is it about you Marcus where people feel comfortable showing you their most disgusting habits?
MARCUS PARKS
Since I was a teenager.
BEN KISSEL
You've seen everybody's porn.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I never went to buy porn with my boss.
BEN KISSEL
No, never.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I work in show business!
MARCUS PARKS
No and it wasn't that weird. I mean it was weird but yeah. I ended up buying a DVD just cause I felt weird not buying a DVD cause he was buying a DVD.
BEN KISSEL
What DVD did you buy?
MARCUS PARKS
It was a vintage porn compilation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What did he buy?
MARCUS PARKS
Just porn, he just bought porn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking my twink employee.
BEN KISSEL
Fantasies come true.
MARCUS PARKS
I can't get more into what that guy did without actually saying where I worked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Incriminating him.
MARCUS PARKS
Incriminating, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Shouldn't be doing that at this point.
BEN KISSEL
It's not illegal.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's not illegal it's just a weird thing. And I don't wanna put this place on blast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Bresciani though, she also had both a cocaine and a methadone habit and she could often be found on Allen Street in the Lower East Side. This fact was well known to Joel Rifkin who'd become obsessed with Tiffany Bresciani after seeing her perform. After finding her, picking her up, and negotiating a fee of 20 bucks, Rifkin drove her to a parking lot in his mother's sedan where he again couldn't maintain an erection. This Rifkin said got blamed on the fact that there was a guy in the van parked next to him.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my God. Come on buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He parked there!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you did it.
MARCUS PARKS
So after he waited for the guy to leave his field of vision, Joel grabbed Tiffany Bresciani by the neck and started strangling her. But just before she passed out, Joel looked up to see that the guy from the van was now outside 3ft away doing tai chi, completely oblivious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the whole time looking at him, I'm looking and I'm thinking how is that even fucking exercise? It looks like he's pushing clouds, I don't know what he's doing. You know what I mean? Tai chi.
BEN KISSEL
He's just got this Steven Seagal looking dude doing tai chi, what are they under a fucking bridge?
MARCUS PARKS
No they're just in a parking lot somewhere.
BEN KISSEL
Just a random parking lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
New York peace, you have to find it somewhere.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah okay. Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As soon as Rifkin was done though, he left Bresciani's body in the backseat totally naked and drove it back to his home at around 7AM. Once he got there he told his now constantly irate mother that he had to do some errands before she could have her car back.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because she's literally getting all the calls like where's Joel? He was supposed to cut my lawn. And they're all like I don't know where he is. And he's just a total absolute piece of fucking... He's just the worst.
MARCUS PARKS
And he's constantly taking her car at all hours. And she's long since stopped asking him where've you been, what've you been doing, where you at, why out all hours of the night Joel? Cause she knows where he is now. She knows exactly where he is and she knows that she can't stop him without either locking the door to his room or fucking murdering him. He then drove to Kmart, bought antifreeze, oil, and a tarp, then took the car to an empty lot where he wrapped Tiffany Bresciani's body in said tarp which was then locked in the trunk. Having hid the body temporarily, Joel took the car back home and handed the keys over to his mother who unknowingly ran her errands that day with the body of a dead woman in the trunk.
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah dude. Then what's interesting is that she leaves and he says quote, he's like, "And I was having like a little panic attack." Which I think is not true. I think that he understood kind of what was happening. He's now directly put his quote unquote "beloved mother" in with the fucking serial killer's evidence.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she's just going to the quilt store, going to Dunkin'.
BEN KISSEL
What if she bought a bunch of fucking groceries and had to put them in the trunk? Did he think about that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he's stupid. He's fucking stupid.
BEN KISSEL
He's stupid, I see.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not that he's stupid, it's that at this point he's just gotten lazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's lazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Because that's the thing is that he knew that when he got home his mom's gonna ask to use the car but he didn't give himself enough time to drive the car home, get rid of the body, put it somewhere, stop off at his fucking shed. But at this point he's probably lost his shed but he's just not thinking things through like he was at the beginning.
BEN KISSEL
He's a fucking putz.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He says he wasn't trying to get caught but it definitely reads as somebody trying to get caught.
BEN KISSEL
Or at least not caring if he did, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think it's more that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Didn't give a fuck. Just doesn't give a fucking shit.
BEN KISSEL
Did he want the fame?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Is he like Berkowitz? Did he want to be discovered? Did he want the headlines?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll talk about that in a little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. He liked the attention but it's complicated. But even though Joel was a little nervous while his mother was gone for those four hours-
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
He decided to start on a little project to ensure that something like this wouldn't happen again. Since his truck was always breaking down and he kept having to borrow his mother's car to murder women, he decided it was time to put a new engine into an old Mazda single cab B series junker that he owned. Once his mother returned and night fell, Joel moved Tiffany Bresciani's corpse to the garage with a wheelbarrow and covered it with a tarp. He then forgot about the body completely for three days while becoming hyper focused on the engine project.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning Joel's hyper focus, our head researcher pointed out to us that Joel Rifkin might have had undiagnosed autism and not just because he became focused on a project to the point where he ignored a dead body decomposing in the same room for three days. From what we've been told concerning autism and Joel Rifkin, Joel showed multiple signs of being neurodivergent. He was never able to look anybody in the eye, he had very few facial expressions, he was never able to hold a job or maintain friendships, and he had a very hard time understanding the emotions of others. That being said it's important to note that Joel Rifkin was not a serial killer because he was possibly autistic. Instead his possible autism had no more to do with his serial murders than Dennis Rader's baldness had to do with his.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a sign of high testosterone.
BEN KISSEL
Well let's be honest, it's not a sign of high testosterone, I don't even think that that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a sign of high testosterone.
BEN KISSEL
I do think there's something about his bald head that made it scarier.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a piece of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
But it's not a causation.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a spice in the serial killer soup, it's a vegetable in the soup.
MARCUS PARKS
Not in the serial killer soup, in his serial killer soup. Not the serial killer soup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, on his. If he was somewhere on the autism spectrum, absolutely. But he also just was a fucking bastard and he had antisocial personality disorder. He had something, like many other things that make you a serial killer, not this.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the way I look at is that while there's no correlation between autism and serial killing or really any correlation between mental illness and violence at all, Joel's possible undiagnosed neurodivergence might have been a contributing factor to his rapidly approaching capture. See because Rifkin was so heavily focused on that engine, the disposal of the decomposing body fell completely to the wayside. Because it's not like Joel didn't know there was a body in the same room, he knew there was a body in there with him.
BEN KISSEL
Well I'm assuming it started to smell a little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Henry, didn't you say that he put Neosporin in his nostrils?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He put neosporin up into his nostrils so he wasn't smelling it and his family wouldn't go in there because he had become such a hoarder that no one wanted to go in and out of his bedroom. So you have a normal woman's house in Long Island living there and she has let her son devolve into whatever he's become in his room and the garage. And they just sort of allowed him to have those areas and they just stopped going in because it was already filthy. It was filled with old food, it was already smelled like rot. And so it kind of slid within it.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
He's probably pissing in the corner. It's not a good place, it's a place that you want to stay out of.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But as soon as Joel repaired his Mazda pickup, he loaded the body in the back and took it out to dispose of it somewhere. Problem was since this was a junker, the truck didn't have license plates and the first cop who saw Joel hit the red and blues. Joel very unwisely panicked, thinking that the cops would immediately smell the four day old corpse in the back if he stopped. So Joel decided to play Dukes of Hazzard with a state trooper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, it's time to put on my racing song. (singing) Brenda and Eddie were still going steady in the summer of '75. When they decided the marriage would be at the end of July. Everyone said they were crazy, Brenda you know you're much too lazy.
BEN KISSEL
You are lazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Eddie could never afford to live that kind of life. Brenda and Eddie would always know how to survive!
BEN KISSEL
I love that Irish folk song. So he's got a junker that he himself repaired.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a Long Island classic.
BEN KISSEL
It's something. He's got a junker that he fixed himself and he thinks that he's gonna be able to outrun a state trooper in a very nice state trooper vehicle.
MARCUS PARKS
Unwisely was the word that I used.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wasn't thinking clearly.
BEN KISSEL
Oh he wasn't. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well not too long after exiting from the Southern State Parkway and running a stop sign, the state trooper called in the situation and before along multiple cars were chasing after Joel. The chase went on for 20 minutes but finally Joel took a turn too fast and lost control, crashing into a utility pole. The body was found almost immediately as Joel Rifkin was laid on the ground with his hands behind his back.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
And after 17 murders, he was finally arrested because of one simple mistake that was entirely his own.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's on the ground, he was literally on the ground with his hands behind his head and the cops went up to him and they were like, 'Do you know you don't have a license plate? That's why we were pulling you over.'
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If you're that cop, I mean obviously it's horrible what's happened here but that's a big get.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is literally how my father became a detective.
BEN KISSEL
You get to retire. Yeah, you get to retire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He pulled over a murderer. He pulled over a dude who had killed two people and he pulled the thing and it had a warrant out for his arrest. The guy ran like 20 ft, my dad caught him and he got a bunch of medals.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's crazy. And what did he do with that? With that newfound...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Straight to the desk, man. He went straight to the desk and he pulled his gun never again.
BEN KISSEL
Never again.
MARCUS PARKS
But did he get a lot of free entrances to Mets games and shit like that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude being a cop back day was pure freedom, dude. You just flash the badge. We went Mets for free, I saw Metz for free. I got right up next to the dangerous part where they shoot the fireworks off. We got to go through that whole thing.
BEN KISSEL
Really great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's amazing, dude. Phantom! I saw Phantom of the Opera for free. We got that limo.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah was that like this year on Fourth of July where the NYPD over here at one of the piers even though the entire fucking coast was just jam packed with people, the NYPD kept a very sparsely attended pier just for them and their fucking family?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Was it like that shit? Was it like that bullshit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it was. Yes, yes.
BEN KISSEL
In case of a nuclear attack, don't ask why? How? Just get inside.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nuclear holocaust. In case of a nuclear holocaust, first of all kiss your ass goodbye.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Second of all, trains will not be running until Friday.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, trains will be running on a holiday schedule in case of a nuclear holocaust.
BEN KISSEL
We talked about that a bit on Top Hat this week. We got some good humor out of that.
MARCUS PARKS
That's good, it's good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got some good humor out of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon after arriving at the nearest police station, Joel who had never gotten any attention his whole life, he talked for 13 hours straight.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
Going into great detail about all 17 murders. The first murder he went on trial for was Tiffany Bresciani and Joel said that it was during this trial after seeing the families of the women that he killed that he finally began to realize that they hadn't just been objects.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my bad.
BEN KISSEL
That's your bad?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's on me.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
This did not however mean that Joel felt empathy. Really all it did was change Joel's perspective. It's like a child who runs into his teacher at the grocery store and suddenly realizes that teachers don't live at the school and never leave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I thought they all love sucking dick.
BEN KISSEL
I remember when I ran into my teacher at El Dorado's in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. We both met eyes and we both knew we shouldn't have been there. So it was silent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Silence.
MARCUS PARKS
El Dorado's, is that a gentleman's club?
BEN KISSEL
No, that was the porn store.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh it was the porn store.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I don't know if it's still there. I remember, man, I was just doing some, not research, but I was... Okay. So I was... Okay, anyway...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you about to confess to?
MARCUS PARKS
I'm here for it man, fucking let's go.
BEN KISSEL
You can rent sex dolls and I just thought that was funny because there's a website that I was looking at with someone and I stumbled upon it and I just thought it was funny because you can rent them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Ugh. The idea of the poor fucks that have to clean it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And then the sex dolls are really weird. But anyway, you know, there's that. So it's America's only sex doll story and the first question is why rent? And you can literally rent and deliver them to you and you can rent them, you can rent them by the hour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's something, right? If you own your own sex doll you have all the maintenance you have to do yourself. It's so hard. If you have a busy schedule, the best part about our renting sex dolls is that you can leave them anywhere. In a ditch, under a mattress. No one will know.
BEN KISSEL
It's kind of what they said. Anyway.
MARCUS PARKS
So it's renting, it's not leasing a sex doll because I had an idea that you were leasing the sex doll. Yeah, that you would have the sex doll for like a year, maybe two years and then you could trade in for a new one. But no, it's by the hour rental, huh?
BEN KISSEL
It's rental, it's bizarre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
It's a bizarre thing.
MARCUS PARKS
I think that's better.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Joel Rifkin believed that he'd somehow cheat the system and be set free despite killing 17 women.
BEN KISSEL
How?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's so dumb and delusional.
BEN KISSEL
Fucking moron. How?
MARCUS PARKS
What he thought was he thought that they had illegally entered into his home. Because all of the other murders, like yeah there was the confessions but all the other murders, all of that evidence was found in his house.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
And he thought okay yeah they got me for Tiffany Bresciani but if I get that played down to manslaughter then I could just do 25 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had this idea that because when they went to search the house that they didn't tell his mother that they were charging him with murder, which is not what you do because literally the whole point is that's where the evidence is. You don't to tell people what evidence you're looking for because if you do they'll try to hide the evidence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What you have to do is go in there and you have a search warrant, you're allowed to enter into the house.
BEN KISSEL
We're here to investigate if you truly are America's number one mother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see this mug but where's the evidence? Cuff her. Cuff this bitch. You're at least number 5.
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't be number one because guess who number one is? My fucking mother.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. I believe that.
MARCUS PARKS
He seriously thought he was gonna do 25 years for killing Tiffany Bresciani and then he was gonna get released and then live the rest of his life as he as he called it "an eccentric celebrity writer". He thought that his life was going to be.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I can just see he's definitely One of those guys on Facebook who posts the 'None of my information is up for sale. Facebook has no right to any of my content'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nobody cares, bro.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, the only person that ever worked out for was John Hinckley. That was it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Did 40 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And even his shows are getting canceled. They're canceling the shows.
MARCUS PARKS
They are.
BEN KISSEL
Are they really?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. That Market Hotel show got canceled because of death threats and all that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He tried to kill the president, wah.
BEN KISSEL
He didn't do it. If anything Reagan should thank him.
MARCUS PARKS
If he didn't kill him? He did kill Brady though.
BEN KISSEL
His approval ratings went - No, he didn't kill Brady.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah he killed Brady. Yeah the bullet that he shot Brady with was what killed him.
BEN KISSEL
Later. I don't do that. I don't do the thing where it's like 20 years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are you blaming the bullet? Is that what you're saying?
MARCUS PARKS
You're saying it's the bullet's fault?
BEN KISSEL
All I know is he helped that man immensely get reelected.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes he did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes he did.
MARCUS PARKS
But this right here, this is my favorite part of the entire Joel Rifkin story. So Joel Rifkin, he's on the cover of the New York Post, 'I Killed 17 Women'. He's hot shit in New York City.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Everybody's talking about Joel Rifkin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's loving it. And he's running his defense like a general, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a quote from a letter he wrote to his attorney where he was like, 'If I want you to think something's important, I'll fucking tell you it's important because I know what's important.'
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Really? Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. He's ruling the roost, man. I mean he's cock of the walk here. But in one of the craziest moments I've ever heard of the universe righting itself, just as Joel's notoriety was reaching its peak in the New York City metro area, a man named Colin Ferguson went on a mass shooting spree on a Long Island railroad commuter train and since mass shootings were rare rather than routine in those days, Ferguson's story sucked all the true crime air out of the room and Joel Rifkin was soon relegated to the who gives a shit back pages of the fucking tabloids right before they flipped to the sports section.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, they didn't even put a camera in for the trial. He was all prepared too, even though he looked like shit, he was all rumpled and he looked like garbage.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he was ready for his primetime moment and then it all got taken.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's what happened to what was it, Mia Farrow? No, what was the other gal who died on camera and then Michael Jackson died?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Farrah Fawcett.
MARCUS PARKS
Farrah Fawcett. That's also what happened to the Arab Spring also with Michael Jackson's death.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Pretty deep, pretty weird.
MARCUS PARKS
That was a Seena Jon joke from about 12 years ago.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. Seena Ghaznavi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of interesting to think about how many little small things changed history in a way that led us to here, little dumb things that happened.
BEN KISSEL
We just know for a fact someone on September 10, 2001 did something really great but we never heard about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really great. We'll never know.
BEN KISSEL
No idea.
MARCUS PARKS
Well things were only made worse for Joel Rifkin when Colin Ferguson, the guy who brought the limelight away from him, Colin Ferguson got transferred to the same county jail where Rifkin was held and they got into a fistfight and Ferguson beat the shit out of Joel Rifkin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. They got into a fight about body count.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They got into a fight literally where Colin Ferguson because he was truly very crazy, he was like, 'I killed six devils, you just killed people.' And then Joel Rifkin's like, 'Well that killed 17 of them.' And then the guy beat the shit out of him.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Always annoying.
MARCUS PARKS
Rifkin was soon transferred to Rikers for his upcoming trials, where he became a punching bag for a whole series of other inmates and he would routinely show up to hearings with black eyes. And after that Rifkin was found guilty of five murders in relatively quick succession. But when he was found guilty of the fifth murder, he seemed more concerned with the surgery he'd just had to remove a cyst from his thigh three weeks earlier. In open court, and this is right after he was sentenced for his fifth murder, he said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"My being here today with an open 3.5 inch surgical incision is a flagrant violation of the court's oath and responsibility. This defendant, (scoffs) defendant sees no reason in law or logic that compels this defendant to be here on this date when the court could have easily postponed this matter for two weeks for this wound to heal properly."
BEN KISSEL
All right now, if you just turn over, pull down your pants, keep the underwear on, it's time for the wedgie. I hate this man so much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my favorite quote. I hate this fucking guy. This is another one of my favorite last quotes he has. "I have premonitions you know. I will die at 69. My father died at 68, outlived his mother by one year. I predicted my arrest, I was 34 which is half of 68. I knew that the number 17 would be the last because 2x17=34. I even calculated the extra days for leap years, like for the year the Dolphins played the Super Bowl."
MARCUS PARKS
Remember that?
BEN KISSEL
Was that was a direct quote?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was a direct quote.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that was a direct quote. And he did say leap year, like when the Dolphins won. That's his touchstone for a leap year is the year the dolphins won the Super Bowl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His touchstone.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah of course. Sure. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stupid.
BEN KISSEL
It's very stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
But by the end of it all Joel Rifkin was sentenced to over 200 years in prison and got sent to Attica, which at the time also held Mark David Chapman and David Berkowitz. All three of them were in the same prison at the same time.
BEN KISSEL
My angina!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously. They could not keep milk in that prison if they wanted to. How much milk those fuckers had to go through, man. Those three in there, dude?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But since then that dream team of New York shitheads has been broken up and Joel Rifkin has spent the last 26 years in solitary confinement because he was getting bullied too much by the other inmates. They weren't even threatening to kill him, they were just literally throwing shit at him, they were just throwing cups of piss and cups of shit. He would complain about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You stop it! Stop it!
MARCUS PARKS
He would actually go, 'Real classy guys, real classy.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Real classy, real classy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. No, it's Attica so classy isn't really in the vernacular of actions. So wow.
MARCUS PARKS
He doesn't even leave his cell during the hour of recreation he's allowed each day. He spends 24 hours a day in his fucking solitary confinement cell.
BEN KISSEL
Well I guess with his 17 tapes he gets to replay in his head all the time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does. And he says he still remembers every single minute of it to this day.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead he only leaves his cell three times a week for 10 minutes to take a shower. And that is how he will live in cowardice until the day he dies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got him.
BEN KISSEL
It ain't worth it. That's number one. Don't kill anybody. You're killing yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No man, fuck that piece of shit. And I'd also like to end this episode with a reminder truly that sex work is work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we need to take care of these people.
MARCUS PARKS
Got to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they're not disposable.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are human beings that have lives and it's just a job.
BEN KISSEL
Well something that is disposable is America's only sex doll store.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is shit is deeply disposable.
BEN KISSEL
Feel free. Why rent?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're trying to replace humans and we should keep it human, keep sex work human.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I feel it's very close to comedy where we're just trying to make people's lives a little bit better and so I'll never understand it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Just trying to make you smile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So fuck you Joel Rifkin, I hope you choke to death on a fucking hot dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think he's going to get any hot dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They get it on July 4th.
BEN KISSEL
No, they don't do any special meals anymore. He gets the loaf.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You get loaf!
BEN KISSEL
Which I'm sure he complains about every single day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
He does.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, well thank you so much for listening to this series on Joel Rifkin, interesting to get back to some blood and guts and just a reminder what fucking pathetic losers all of these morons are.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You hear that sound? You hear that sound? Dun-dun-dun! We made it. It's 499 today. That means the next episode that is officially a Last Podcast episode will be episode 500. 500 episodes of pure mirth, joy, edutainment, perfectly done podcasting.
MARCUS PARKS
Perfect.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't it strange that I just don't enjoy celebrating it because doesn't it mean then that aren't we closer to the grave?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every day.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every minute.
BEN KISSEL
I feel almost the same way on episode 500 as I do my 41st birthday coming up. I almost feel angry about it.
MARCUS PARKS
It's interesting. I feel a little bit somewhat the same about my 40th birthday coming up on January 19th in which we will be in Perth, Australia for my 40th birthday, January 19, 2023.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You better come, Perth. You better come.
MARCUS PARKS
You better come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But we have a couple announcements.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So next week before we get to episode 500 because it is so thick we're getting into UFOs next week which I think everyone will enjoy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then you'll see what we have planned for you basically for the rest of the summer which I'm really, really excited for.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, did you see that the head of The Kinks, the lead singer, he was abducted by a UFO and they told him he could never come again!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was then told he was not the lead singer.
MARCUS PARKS
Wait, Ray Davies?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was not Ray Davies, it was the other guy. Dave Davies.
BEN KISSEL
It was something Davies.
MARCUS PARKS
Ray Davies and Dave Davies. Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We already got corrected.
BEN KISSEL
I don't fucking know!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We were getting emails. People are upset.
MARCUS PARKS
We're actually discovering in the subject of the next No Dogs in Space series, very much a UFO believer, name checks Colin Wilson, she is somebody that... We're not gonna announce it just yet who we're covering but she's a wonderful woman and yeah, surprisingly super into UFOs. Super into UFOs.
BEN KISSEL
All right!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we're getting into it. And speaking of Australia, one thing I wanted to say about Australia and my 40th birthday, we're gonna be ending in New Zealand and I wanna do a Lord of the Rings thing.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
MARCUS PARKS
I want to do a whole Lord of the Rings thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, we're gonna do a thing. I'm doing it with you.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What does that mean? What is a Lord of the Rings thing?
MARCUS PARKS
Well all of the movies were shot in New Zealand.
BEN KISSEL
I know but what are you gonna do?
MARCUS PARKS
You can do tours. You can do tours of like here's the Fields of Rohan, here's the Black Gates of Mordor, here's the Shire. And if any of you listeners out there, if you run a super cool tour that's not like here's the guy that made the fucking hobbit butts, there's all these weird tours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, hobbit butts are incredible complex.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Our buddy Manny makes a lot of the hobbit butts and it's actually pretty incredible.
BEN KISSEL
It's very difficult to do. But yes of course I missed your 30th birthday so we're gonna make it a tradition. Every 0 birthday, maybe I don't have to be there.
MARCUS PARKS
How are you gonna not be there? We have a show, we have work that day.
BEN KISSEL
No I know but-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You will be forced to be there.
BEN KISSEL
They're gonna make fun of me for being a tree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what you get. That's what you deserve.
MARCUS PARKS
But if anybody out there knows of anyone that runs a super cool three or four day, maybe five day Lord of the Rings tour.
BEN KISSEL
5 days!?
MARCUS PARKS
If you know anyone who does it...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna do it. I'm with you, sign me up too.
MARCUS PARKS
You can't just do it in a day. It's a country, it's a huge thing, it's a big deal.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
So if you know of anyone who does it or if you do it, sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com, get a hold of us cause I wanna start planning my hobbit journey.
BEN KISSEL
I'll be there then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna do it.
MARCUS PARKS
We're gonna do hobbits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't wait. We're gonna say like, 'Ah!' We're gonna make a lot of 'Hmm' like that one video that places all the sounds.
MARCUS PARKS
Ah, indeed the Fields of Rohan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But for those of you that will be at San Diego Comic-Con next week-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We will be there as well. Come and check us out. We have signings I believe, we have a panel Friday.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, Friday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe at 10:30 in the morning.
MARCUS PARKS
It's 10:30AM, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a bit early, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna love us at 10:30 in the morning. And then we have signings on Friday and Saturday. Come and check it out, come visit us at the booth.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can't fucking wait to be back at Comic-Con. It's gonna be fucking sweet.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, we can't wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Preorder Last Comic Book on the Left issue 2 on Z2comics.com.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Issue 2. And we just got in a script from James Tynion IV who does Department of Truth, fucking Joker War, Nice House on the Lake. So many great horror comics. So we just got something in from him and we got so many amazing creators like Rick Veitch also working on this book. I'm gonna be doing something for this book, Henry is doing something for this book. Yeah, this second one is gonna be big. Big, big, big.
BEN KISSEL
I'm doing something for the third book, I'm gonna do something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you gonna do?
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna do something. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can wait.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, well thank you so much for listening. Thanks for supporting all the shows. Also thanks to all the great calls we've been getting on our Sirius radio show, that's every Monday and it's always every Monday, so that's 4PM PST and 7PM EST. So feel free to call in there. Y'all have been great, it's been great to talk to you. And yeah, that's about it. All right everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hope that you gird your loins because here comes Angina Man.
BEN KISSEL
Angina Man! Hail yourselves everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me, y'all. Hail me.
BEN KISSEL
In case of a nuclear attack, go inside and stay inside.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Put on them sunglasses, that's for sure.
BEN KISSEL
Sunglasses.
MARCUS PARKS
Don't forget to take off all of your clothes and put them in a plastic bag as they may have been covered in radioactive dust or debris.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What about the rest of you?! What about the rest of you?! It's just clothes!
MARCUS PARKS
Clean. You must clean as soon as - but also get inside but also clean but also stay inside and stay away from windows but also clean yourself. Find a plastic bag. Move to the middle of the building.
BEN KISSEL
I literally did feel like like Roddy Piper in They Live because you can just see the word 'fear' just stabbing me in the back. Fear, fear, fear!
MARCUS PARKS
No, I definitely looked around the office and just said nope, not surviving this one. These big fucking windows, nope. This isn't if it happens while I'm here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. I really wanna be here if it already comes. You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Not getting out.
BEN KISSEL
Hail yourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On a light note.