Joel Rifken
Arrested June 28, 1993. He was driving on the Southern State Parkway in New York with no license plates. He led the New York State police and Nassau county police on a high speed chance. He had the body of his last victim Tiffany Bresciani in the bed of the truck he was driving.
Joel confessed to 17 murders making him the most prolific killer in New York state history.
Rifkens first two victims were killed and dismembered 18 months apart in his childhood home on Long Island NY while his mother was away.
Except for brief periods while away at college or living with a woman Joel lived at home.
Joel admitted that he never saw any of his victims as people only as objects to be used for his own insatiable hungers and deviant desires.
He had a host of learning disabilities that were begin to surface in school. Besides suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia that impaired his ability to read he would often stutter when beginning to speak, his mind would wander in mid-sentence and it was difficult for him to follow simple instructions. Although his IQ was well above average, upon first meeting him for the first time most people believed that he was mentally impaired.
Like all of us Joel wanted to please his father, but was never able to do so. Although well meaning, when Joel didn't understand school work that his father was trying to help him with. His father would make Joel feel like a disappointment.
Joel and his family moved when he was a child. Joel didn't respond well to the move. Because of his learning disabilities he was a constant target for the school yard bullies. Because of this and his feeling of inferiority around his father Joel developed a social anxiety disorder.
Although he desperately wanted to be a member of the gang Joel was always more comfortable alone. He began to hid himself in places where he could not be found and developed a fantasy life that lasted well into adult hood.
The one thing no one knew about Joel was that he had been entertaining graphic and violent sexual fantasies since childhood.
They were diverse from having sex slaves and captives to harming women with pointed objects like darts and arrows.
The first murder took place in March of 1989 two years to the month after his father's death. He was able to lure the victim into his home.
Joel maintains that he had no deep-rooted hatred for women in general or prostitutes in particular but was only trying to stem his over-powering and degrading need for their sexual services. According to him they had to die so he could kill his reliance on them. He chose to date a prostitute so he could avoid rejection.
In an attempt to destroy his need for consumer sex he had developed an even more insatiable and destructive desire for murder.
Because killing excited him more than sex he now found himself fantasizing about killing nearly every girl he was with. Very often fighting the urge to kill would dimes his ability to maintain an erection.
The killings seemed to occur in the wake of a perceives slight or following either a real or imagined humiliation.
Joel tested positive for hepatitis and several other blood disorders. Believing he had acquired a potentially fatal disease, Joel embarked on a more frenzied murderous spree. By the end of 1992 he had claimed at least 7 victims.
Joel's reality was killing then mutilation women. He is a sadistic killer w ho achieved sexual satisfaction by strangling women. He got a sexual charge out of thinking about strangling young women from a young age.
Source Information--The Joel Rifken Story: From the Mouth of the Monster. Robert Mladinich, Pocket Books 2001
