Joel David Rifkin

Serial Killer

Joel David Rifkin: The Long Island Serial Killer

Background

Joel David Rifkin was an American serial killer who murdered women in the New York metropolitan area between 1989 and 1993. Born in New York City on January 20, 1959, he was adopted as an infant and raised in East Meadow on Long Island. He experienced academic difficulties, struggled socially and attended several colleges without earning a degree. As an adult, he operated a small landscaping business and continued living in his family's East Meadow home. Rifkin targeted women he encountered in areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn associated with street prostitution. Many of the women were experiencing addiction, poverty, unstable housing or estrangement from their families. Their circumstances sometimes delayed missing-person reports and allowed Rifkin to believe their disappearances would receive little attention. Investigators eventually concluded that he had killed 17 women, although he was convicted of nine murders.

Beginning of the Murders

Rifkin's first known victim was Heidi Balch, who also used the names Susan Spencer and "Susie." Rifkin brought her to his family's East Meadow home on February 20, 1989. After killing her, he dismembered her remains and scattered them across New York and New Jersey in an effort to prevent identification. Her head was discovered inside a paint container near a golf course in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, on March 5, 1989. Additional remains were recovered from Pequannock Creek and the East River. For more than two decades, the recovered remains were unidentified. Advances in forensic investigation eventually allowed authorities to identify the victim as Heidi Balch in 2013. The identification confirmed that the woman Rifkin had described as his first victim was the same person whose remains had been recovered in 1989. Rifkin's second acknowledged victim was Julie Elizabeth Blackbird. The exact date of her death has never been conclusively established, although investigators placed the murder in 1990, approximately 14 to 16 months after Balch's death. Rifkin said he brought Blackbird to the East Meadow residence, killed her and concealed her remains in containers that he discarded in waterways. Her body has never been recovered. ...

Confirmed Victims: (17)

Heidi Susie Balch Age: (25), Date of Death: February 20, 1989

Joel Rifkin - Wikipedia