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The Psychologist Who Evaluated Joel Rifkin _ What He Found · Luke's English Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: I went over to Nassau Correction Center, and shortly on
0:08
Speaker 1: entering the room, he asked me if I was afraid
0:10
Speaker 1: of him, and then I said something to him like
0:12
Speaker 1: I wouldn't let you date my sister, that's for sure,
0:16
Speaker 1: and then he laughed.
0:18
Speaker 2: I'm beginning to see a pattern in the cases I've
0:21
Speaker 2: been covering in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Something changes,
0:26
Speaker 2: the term serial killer enters the mainstream, and suddenly there's
0:31
Speaker 2: language for something that didn't exist in the public consciousness before.
0:37
Speaker 1: They haven't really accomplished anything of value or worth, and
0:40
Speaker 1: this is really their project in life, you know, this
0:44
Speaker 1: is their being accomplishment. Now, of course that's perverse.
0:48
Speaker 2: Joel Rifkin confessed to the murder of seventeen women, most
0:53
Speaker 2: within a three year period in the late eighties and
0:56
Speaker 2: early nineties. He left the remains scattered across Long Island, Connecticut,
1:02
Speaker 2: and New Jersey.
1:03
Speaker 3: It's hard to reconcile the fact that this nice guy
1:07
Speaker 3: you're talking to about normal things is capable of such brutality.
1:12
Speaker 2: The media will later call him Joel the Ripper, but
1:15
Speaker 2: it's a name he didn't earn in real time, because
1:20
Speaker 2: for years, no one was looking.
1:23
Speaker 1: He narrowly escaped on a couple of occasions getting caught,
1:27
Speaker 1: and I think it probably fed his point of view
1:30
Speaker 1: that he finally found his calling.
1:35
Speaker 2: In this episode, we break down how Joel Rifkin avoided
1:39
Speaker 2: detection for years and why the focus on the killer
1:43
Speaker 2: and not the victims may have made it possible. I'm
1:48
Speaker 2: James Buddy Day. This is unmarked. I've spent a lot
1:59
Speaker 2: of time in Long Island. It's a place where I've
2:02
Speaker 2: covered a number of true crimes across multiple platforms, and recently,
2:08
Speaker 2: on April eleventh, twenty twenty six, a local resident named
2:13
Speaker 2: Rex Huerman appeared in court to plead guilty to the
2:17
Speaker 2: murders of eight women during a seventeen year killing spree,
2:21
Speaker 2: mostly concentrated around Gilgo Beach. Now, in that case, the
2:27
Speaker 2: revelations are only beginning. It'll be years before we have
2:32
Speaker 2: the full picture. And that's not unique. Richard Cottingham, Robert
2:37
Speaker 2: Picton the Grim Sleeper, they all follow a similar pattern.
2:42
Speaker 2: The true scope of their crimes was not understood until
2:45
Speaker 2: after they were incidentally discovered. In fact, there are only
2:50
Speaker 2: a few serial killers that I've come across that reflect
2:53
Speaker 2: this idea more than another long Islander a man who
2:58
Speaker 2: is operating at the same time. I'm as rex human.
3:01
Speaker 2: His name Joel Rifkin. Before we go too deep, let
3:08
Speaker 2: me catch you up and to show you just how
3:11
Speaker 2: far under the radar Rifkin was. I pulled the arrest
3:15
Speaker 2: report from Nassau County. It reads like a routine traffic stop.
3:20
Speaker 2: It shouldn't. On June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three, at
3:24
Speaker 2: approximately three point fifteen am, a nineteen eighty four Tan
3:30
Speaker 2: Mazda B two thousand pickup truck was observed driving without
3:34
Speaker 2: a license plate by a state trooper. The officer attempted
3:39
Speaker 2: a routine traffic stop, but the driver fled. What followed
3:44
Speaker 2: was a twenty five minute high speed chase, ending when
3:48
Speaker 2: the suspect crashed into a utility poll The driver was
3:52
Speaker 2: arrested and identified as thirty four year old New York
3:56
Speaker 2: State resident Joel David Rifkin.
4:00
Speaker 1: He came out of the truck, and he made an
4:01
Speaker 1: immediate confession, like he told this officer there's a dead
4:08
Speaker 1: body in the back of my truck. I don't think
4:10
Speaker 1: the officer believed him.
4:13
Speaker 2: During the subsequent investigation, Rifkin admitted to sixteen additional murders,
4:18
Speaker 2: claiming all were sex workers that he'd picked up in
4:22
Speaker 2: Manhattan and Long Island.
4:24
Speaker 1: He was brought back to the barracks the state troopers
4:28
Speaker 1: and he made a complete confession.
4:32
Speaker 2: That's doctor N. G. Baryl, a renowned criminal psychologist and
4:36
Speaker 2: director of New York Forensic He's been interviewing and testifying
4:42
Speaker 2: in criminal and civil cases for more than thirty years.
4:46
Speaker 2: In fact, I've worked with him in the past on
4:49
Speaker 2: my documentary series Psycho the Lost Tapes of ed Geen,
4:53
Speaker 2: which you can find on Amazon Prime Video.
4:56
Speaker 1: To do these interviews and engage someone who's committed these
5:01
Speaker 1: type of crimes, you've got to have a certain mentality yourself.
5:06
Speaker 2: In the Rifkin case, doctor Beryl was on the scene early.
5:10
Speaker 2: In fact, he was one of the first people to
5:13
Speaker 2: examine Rifkin after his arrest in nineteen ninety three.
5:17
Speaker 1: I was part of his first trial in Nassau County,
5:24
Speaker 1: and I was hired by the defense. He struck me
5:28
Speaker 1: as kind of certainly anxious, somewhat disorganized, and much much
5:36
Speaker 1: in need of help.
5:38
Speaker 2: Prior to his arrest in ninety three, police not only
5:41
Speaker 2: had no idea who Rifkin was, they didn't even know
5:45
Speaker 2: there was a serial killer operating at all. Going through
5:49
Speaker 2: the case files, what stands out isn't just what's there,
5:54
Speaker 2: it's what isn't No task force, no public warning, no
5:58
Speaker 2: coordinated effort. When doctor Beryl meets Rifkin for the first time,
6:03
Speaker 2: he encounters a man who is eager to talk about
6:06
Speaker 2: what the police have failed to see.
6:09
Speaker 3: I thought that he was.
6:12
Speaker 1: Glib and he was remorseless. You know. He didn't even
6:21
Speaker 1: attempt to suggest that he wasn't involved in any of this.
6:26
Speaker 1: It was just clear and he acknowledged that this was
6:30
Speaker 1: the case.
6:31
Speaker 2: Joel Rifkin is not just a psychopath, but fixated on
6:35
Speaker 2: the idea of being one.
6:38
Speaker 1: My impression was that he liked the company, He liked
6:41
Speaker 1: the to talk about himself, and he even made jokes,
6:46
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't know, it was kind of odd.
6:51
Speaker 1: My sense was that this is this was going to
6:57
Speaker 1: be I think from from his life's perspective, this is
7:02
Speaker 1: going to be a windfall for him in terms of attention.
7:06
Speaker 2: In Rifkin's case, he expressed a desire to be recognized
7:11
Speaker 2: along men that he studied, people like Arthur Shawcross and
7:16
Speaker 2: the Green River Killer. Their crimes became something like a
7:20
Speaker 2: goal to Rifkin, something he'd been building towards over time.
7:25
Speaker 2: And to understand when that project begins, we have to
7:29
Speaker 2: go all the way back to the beginning. Long Island
7:40
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty nine looks like the cliche of the
7:44
Speaker 2: American dream picture. Rows of new homes, young families, and
7:49
Speaker 2: steady commutes into the city. Places like Levittown. They promise stability,
7:57
Speaker 2: mass produced houses financed through the GI Bill, filled with
8:00
Speaker 2: young families. It's a culture built on conformity, a place
8:05
Speaker 2: where everything looks connected, even though people they often aren't.
8:12
Speaker 2: This is where Joel Rifkin grows up. He's born January twentieth,
8:16
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine, to two unwed college students and immediately
8:21
Speaker 2: placed up for adoption. Remember this is a time when
8:25
Speaker 2: unwed pregnancy is seen as a social crisis, and it's
8:30
Speaker 2: Rifkin's adoption that needs to be parsed carefully, because his
8:35
Speaker 2: defense will later argue that feelings of rejection tied to
8:39
Speaker 2: being adopted lead to the violent fantasies that follow. They
8:44
Speaker 2: categorize this as quote adopted child syndrome, but that is
8:50
Speaker 2: in science, not even close. It's part of Rifkins's reframing
8:55
Speaker 2: of his own story. Research consistently shows that adopted children,
9:00
Speaker 2: as a group, they don't have higher rates of violent
9:03
Speaker 2: or criminal behavior when compared to non adopted children.
9:07
Speaker 1: I mean, it takes some digging into the family background
9:11
Speaker 1: to see how this whole thing gets rolling. Now there
9:15
Speaker 1: are genetics.
9:16
Speaker 2: Of course, we don't have genetic information on Rifkin's biological parents,
9:22
Speaker 2: but we do have insight into his early environment, beginning
9:27
Speaker 2: with his adoptive parents, Bernard and Gene Rifkin. And when
9:33
Speaker 2: I go through the record, I keep seeing the same
9:36
Speaker 2: false claims repeated. Something I discussed with doctor Beryl when
9:41
Speaker 2: you met Rifkin, And in your opinion, he was mistreated
9:45
Speaker 2: in childhood, which is contrary to what's commonly reported about Rifkin.
9:50
Speaker 2: It's often reported that he had this very normal, idyllic
9:54
Speaker 2: childhood that his parents were loving. So that's wrong, I
9:58
Speaker 2: think gets wrong.
10:00
Speaker 1: He thought for me to get to know who he was,
10:03
Speaker 1: I should not only meet his mother and his sister,
10:06
Speaker 1: but I should go to his house where all this
10:09
Speaker 1: stuff took place. And I did, and I did go
10:12
Speaker 1: over there one evening and she showed me his bedroom
10:16
Speaker 1: and then we had coffee and his mother spoke to me,
10:21
Speaker 1: and his sister was there, and it was kind of weird.
10:25
Speaker 2: The homies describing is in East Meadow, Long Island, a
10:29
Speaker 2: modest suburban four bedroom, two bath house built in nineteen
10:33
Speaker 2: fifty two with a spacious garage. This is where Rifkin
10:37
Speaker 2: lives right up until his arrest.
10:40
Speaker 1: His bedroom was very dreary. If I'm remembering this correctly,
10:47
Speaker 1: there was a John Lennon poster on the wall. It
10:51
Speaker 1: was very dark. It was a fish tank with all
10:55
Speaker 1: this algae growing in it. It looked like the room
11:02
Speaker 1: of a teenager stuck stuck in time.
11:07
Speaker 2: A teenager stuck in time. That's a useful way to
11:11
Speaker 2: understand Rifkin, not as someone evolving, but someone stalled, fixed
11:17
Speaker 2: in place.
11:18
Speaker 1: And he was treated really coolly psychologically, which shouldn't be shocking.
11:23
Speaker 1: I mean, he was, you know, you can you can
11:27
Speaker 1: say mistreated. I think that's fair enough to say, and
11:29
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of chaos, you know, in the family.
11:34
Speaker 2: Contemporary reports from neighbors described the family as quote normal, supportive,
11:40
Speaker 2: but according to Beryl, the reality inside the home is
11:44
Speaker 2: something else. Entirely.
11:47
Speaker 1: Inside the house, things were icy, They were kind of dark,
11:51
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of insults and belittling. I
11:55
Speaker 1: don't know that he was physically violently mistreated, but psychologically.
12:01
Speaker 2: What shows up here are the same developmental precursors of
12:05
Speaker 2: psychopathy which we've seen in a lot of these cases.
12:10
Speaker 2: School records indicate Rifkin has learning disabilities, particularly in math
12:16
Speaker 2: and reading. Picture an awkward, inward kid who struggles to
12:21
Speaker 2: attach to others, watching everyone else do it with ease.
12:26
Speaker 1: He was ridiculed for his lack of you know, academic acumen,
12:32
Speaker 1: and his lack of popularity and being the odd duck.
12:37
Speaker 1: And this was a if I recall, you know, a
12:41
Speaker 1: real disappointment for his father.
12:44
Speaker 2: By grade nine or ten, Rifkin is tall for his age, lanky,
12:49
Speaker 2: He wears oversized glasses. He begins to cycle through periods
12:54
Speaker 2: of depression, especially around the holidays November through January, Valentine's Day, Christmas,
13:02
Speaker 2: New Year's He's watching other people celebrate connection, family relationships,
13:09
Speaker 2: social groups, things that for him feel just out of reach,
13:14
Speaker 2: all while dealing with verbal abuse in the home.
13:18
Speaker 1: The aggressiveness of the verbal abuse, I think played a
13:23
Speaker 1: role in what I would say would be like the
13:27
Speaker 1: internalized self hatred and anger that kind of percolated over time.
13:37
Speaker 4: In high school, his difficulties compound. He's described by psychologists
13:43
Speaker 4: as quote a socially inept, clumsy child who was bullied
13:47
Speaker 4: by his peers end quote.
13:50
Speaker 1: I remember some story about when he was a kid,
13:53
Speaker 1: you know, like he was often locked inside of lockers
13:56
Speaker 1: at the schools. I remember him telling me something about
14:00
Speaker 1: someone forcing her chicken's head into his mouth or something
14:04
Speaker 1: like that when he was a child. So he was,
14:06
Speaker 1: you know, often taken advantage o you know, mocked, treated
14:13
Speaker 1: very badly.
14:15
Speaker 2: At this point, Rifkin is struggling to connect with the
14:18
Speaker 2: world around him, and this is where the fantasy begins
14:22
Speaker 2: to take hold. Going through doctor Beryl's assessment, Rifkin describes
14:27
Speaker 2: episodes of magical thinking. At one point, he imagines speaking
14:32
Speaker 2: to his dead grandfather for comfort. At seventeen, he gets
14:38
Speaker 2: his driver's license and with it away out out of school,
14:43
Speaker 2: out of the house, he takes his mother's Toyota and
14:47
Speaker 2: he just starts driving. That's when Joel Rifkin sees them
14:52
Speaker 2: sex workers for the first time. Access replaces rejection. It's transactional,
14:59
Speaker 2: but it gives him something. He hasn't had contact on
15:03
Speaker 2: his terms in the same car his mother drives during
15:07
Speaker 2: the day.
15:09
Speaker 3: Joel loved the whole ritual of finding the sex workers,
15:16
Speaker 3: of perusing them, driving around the block several times, getting
15:22
Speaker 3: them eagle with anticipation, thinking oh boy, you know, maybe
15:26
Speaker 3: I have a john now, and then driving off. He loved.
15:30
Speaker 3: I think he loved the power associated with the selection process.
15:37
Speaker 2: That's Robert Maladmich, a retired NYPD officer, a former professional
15:42
Speaker 2: heavyweight boxer and journalist who first met Rifkin in the
15:46
Speaker 2: late nineteen seventies and spoke with him long after Rifkin's arrest.
15:52
Speaker 2: When they meet, Joel Rifkin is working a series of
15:55
Speaker 2: menial jobs. He attends multiple colleges with fluctuating interests in
16:01
Speaker 2: horticulture and photography. As Robert recalls, he requested a partner
16:06
Speaker 2: for a journalism assignment and met a fellow student.
16:10
Speaker 3: Within a half hour. Joel Rifkin appeared with his cameras,
16:15
Speaker 3: you know, slung over his shoulder, and he was raring
16:18
Speaker 3: to go. And and that was my first meeting with him.
16:26
Speaker 3: He was kind of rumpled. He you know, he had
16:29
Speaker 3: long hair and wrinkled clothes. He rumpled clothing. You know,
16:35
Speaker 3: probably so a low self esteem, but he was very
16:40
Speaker 3: passionate about the photography.
16:44
Speaker 2: For Rifkin, his investment in photography, it doesn't last, and
16:49
Speaker 2: soon he drops out of college. And that's because research
16:53
Speaker 2: shows that individuals with psychopathic traits often struggle with these
16:58
Speaker 2: kind of routines. They often drift between jobs and drop
17:03
Speaker 2: out of school, not because of a lack of ambition,
17:06
Speaker 2: but because they lack the internal rewards for the outcomes
17:10
Speaker 2: that take time to achieve. It means they have difficulty
17:15
Speaker 2: sustaining effort over time. This again is doctor Beryl.
17:20
Speaker 1: He was living sort of this really pathetic existence and
17:29
Speaker 1: certainly hadn't accomplished a great deal and wasn't able to
17:33
Speaker 1: get himself through college. It wasn't someone with lots of
17:37
Speaker 1: friends or someone who had lots of girlfriends, and you know,
17:43
Speaker 1: was living in his mommy's house on Long Island.
17:47
Speaker 2: Rifkin continues like this until his late twenties. To Doctor Beryl,
17:52
Speaker 2: he describes his life as unremarkable, but despite his internal
17:58
Speaker 2: feelings of worthlessness. At twenty eight years and six foot two,
18:02
Speaker 2: he's physically imposing. And in nineteen eighty seven, that's when
18:08
Speaker 2: the dam breaks when external events bring what's been building
18:12
Speaker 2: underneath to the surface. Joel's father, Bernard Rifkin, is diagnosed
18:18
Speaker 2: with cancer, a condition that causes severe, prolonged pain. Within months,
18:25
Speaker 2: the family is shaken.
18:27
Speaker 1: This is something that was like a touching, touchy issue
18:30
Speaker 1: for him, but his father died.
18:33
Speaker 2: His father's death isn't just tragedy. It's a deeply personal
18:38
Speaker 2: event that happens inside the family home. On February twentieth,
18:44
Speaker 2: Bernard Riffkin writes a note and is found unconscious at
18:48
Speaker 2: the kitchen table following an act of self harm. He's
18:53
Speaker 2: rushed to the hospital but dies four days later.
18:57
Speaker 1: But I think for him it was a terribly disappointing
19:01
Speaker 1: that his father would choose to kill himself. I think
19:05
Speaker 1: that was shocking to him.
19:06
Speaker 2: Despite a difficult upbringing, Rifkin reports a life spent seeking
19:12
Speaker 2: acceptance from his father, and with his death that possibility
19:17
Speaker 2: is gone. What's left is unresolved.
19:22
Speaker 1: I know for Rifkin, you know, he admired his father
19:26
Speaker 1: a lot, and his father was held up as sort
19:31
Speaker 1: of an ideal in his head.
19:33
Speaker 2: In practical terms, the relationship ends without resolution, no approval,
19:40
Speaker 2: no reconciliation. And no recognition. For Rifkin, whose mind places
19:46
Speaker 2: itself at the center of everything, it doesn't just lead
19:50
Speaker 2: to grief, it leads to fixation.
19:54
Speaker 1: He needed, like like most kids and most boys you
19:58
Speaker 1: know they needed. He needed a father who would be
20:02
Speaker 1: not only kind to him and understanding, supportive, encourage him
20:08
Speaker 1: to do good things with his life.
20:15
Speaker 2: Rifkin begins to look for that sense of validation elsewhere.
20:20
Speaker 2: He returns more frequently to sex workers. But on August
20:25
Speaker 2: twenty second, nineteen eighty seven, six months after his father's death,
20:30
Speaker 2: he's arrested for soliciting an undercover officer on Long Island
20:34
Speaker 2: and find two hundred and fifty dollars. It's another humiliation.
20:41
Speaker 2: After this, he spends time in library studying police techniques.
20:47
Speaker 2: He wants to learn how to avoid detection, and, by
20:51
Speaker 2: his own estimation, over the next two years, he sees
20:55
Speaker 2: more than one hundred sex workers without being caught. This
20:59
Speaker 2: is part explained by his change of location. Instead of
21:04
Speaker 2: Long Island, he crosses the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan. This
21:09
Speaker 2: again is Robert Meladdin roll.
21:12
Speaker 3: He would leave his house on Long Island. There was
21:15
Speaker 3: a stroll on Long Island in Hempstead, but there wasn't
21:19
Speaker 3: a lot of action there. So he would go to Brooklyn, East,
21:21
Speaker 3: New York, where there were a preponderance of prostitutes. He
21:26
Speaker 3: would drive around there. If he saw somebody liked he
21:29
Speaker 3: would he would take it.
21:31
Speaker 1: I think found a group of people that, from his perspective,
21:36
Speaker 1: were lower on the social totem pole than he was.
21:42
Speaker 1: And I think that's what got that ball rolling, you know,
21:47
Speaker 1: in terms of kind of being contemptuous of who they
21:51
Speaker 1: are and who they were, and you know, and you know,
21:56
Speaker 1: those were his victims.
21:59
Speaker 3: All of the girls he was with over the years,
22:03
Speaker 3: he would always pick the most emaciated ones. He never
22:08
Speaker 3: picked the ones that looked healthy or looked well, looked
22:14
Speaker 3: as if they could fight back or be formidable.
22:18
Speaker 2: In the late nineteen eighties, the Lower East Side is
22:21
Speaker 2: an area under pressure high crime, heavy drug use. AIDS
22:28
Speaker 2: is the leading cause of death for men aged twenty
22:31
Speaker 2: five to forty four and in women aged twenty five
22:34
Speaker 2: to thirty four in New York City. Gotham City is
22:38
Speaker 2: reporting over two thousand homicides a year.
22:43
Speaker 3: That's seven a day, year after year through the early nineties.
22:49
Speaker 3: What a lot of people don't realize or understand is
22:53
Speaker 3: that back in the in the eighties early nineties, New
22:59
Speaker 3: York compared that today was basically the wild West. There
23:03
Speaker 3: was completely lawless, there was no communication from borough to
23:08
Speaker 3: borrow a quality of life. Crimes like prostitution, outdoor drug
23:14
Speaker 3: sales was pretty much completely ignored.
23:17
Speaker 2: Most nights, Ryfkin can be found picking up women near
23:21
Speaker 2: Delancey Street, but these encounters begin to shift, becoming less
23:27
Speaker 2: transactional and more prolonged.
23:30
Speaker 1: He would take advantage of his mother going to gamble
23:33
Speaker 1: in Atlantic City, so she would get on the bus
23:37
Speaker 1: for seniors and the house would be empty.
23:40
Speaker 2: Rifkin begins a lifelong habit of bringing these women back
23:44
Speaker 2: to his home in East Meadow, not just for sex,
23:47
Speaker 2: but simply to be with them. He buys them cigarettes, alcohol,
23:53
Speaker 2: then drives them back and forth from the city to
23:55
Speaker 2: get drugs. He lets them shower, sleep, anything to extend
24:01
Speaker 2: the interaction, but it doesn't hold. On one occasion, his
24:07
Speaker 2: mother's jewelry is stolen. On another, he attempts to stay
24:10
Speaker 2: with a sex worker in Manhattan, but returns home within weeks.
24:16
Speaker 2: And this is where something starts to shift.
24:19
Speaker 1: I know also that he developed a kind of content
24:25
Speaker 1: for these women. As well.
24:27
Speaker 2: By nineteen eighty eight, Rifkin is collecting books and press
24:31
Speaker 2: clippings about serial killers, men like the Green River Killer
24:36
Speaker 2: and Arthur Shawcross, both known for targeting sex workers. He's
24:41
Speaker 2: reframing his encounters into something that fits into growing sadistic fantasies.
24:49
Speaker 2: And this is a pattern I'm seeing across these cases.
24:53
Speaker 2: Earlier offenders like Ted Bundy. He operated before the term
24:57
Speaker 2: serial killer was widely used, but Rifkin comes later at
25:02
Speaker 2: a time when the construct exists in law enforcement, in media,
25:07
Speaker 2: in culture.
25:09
Speaker 1: This culture was really preoccupied with serial killers. And you know,
25:15
Speaker 1: you know, I remember every student I ever had, graduate
25:19
Speaker 1: student at John Jay College, you know, of criminal justice
25:23
Speaker 1: in New York. Everyone I think fancied themselves is becoming
25:28
Speaker 1: a forensic shrink and be like Jodie Foster.
25:31
Speaker 2: In Post Arrests Psychological Evaluations, Rifkin compares himself to Charles
25:37
Speaker 2: Manson and David Berkowitz. He reports a fascination with shows
25:42
Speaker 2: like Hawaii five Oh and Kojak, absorbing the structure of
25:46
Speaker 2: the villains, savoring the attention, studying it. If you're childhood
25:52
Speaker 2: psychopath who is lonely and can't attach to people, and
25:56
Speaker 2: has violent fantasy, and then you read books about people
25:59
Speaker 2: like you and it gives you a construct an archetype
26:02
Speaker 2: to achieve.
26:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.
26:03
Speaker 1: Well, if you know, you found like a club you
26:06
Speaker 1: can join, you know, would be part of, and up
26:11
Speaker 1: until the time you're arrested, and you know, you see
26:14
Speaker 1: your face and your name, you know, splattered across the media.
26:20
Speaker 1: You know, you don't feel or at least he didn't.
26:23
Speaker 1: And I think it's typical in some ways. They feel,
26:26
Speaker 1: you know, like they haven't really accomplished anything of value
26:31
Speaker 1: or worth, and this is really their project in life,
26:35
Speaker 1: you know, this is this is their big accomplishment.
26:39
Speaker 2: This is where rifkins fantasy begins to coalesce. He sees
26:44
Speaker 2: himself as a victim, burdened by his adoption, bullied and
26:48
Speaker 2: rejected by his peers, dismissed at home, and ultimately unable
26:53
Speaker 2: to meet the expectations of his father. He can't see
26:58
Speaker 2: the external factors, his own limitations, the blind spots that
27:02
Speaker 2: make real relationships so difficult for him. So the serial
27:07
Speaker 2: killers that he fixates on they start to represent something else,
27:12
Speaker 2: not just violence, identity.
27:15
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy three movie called Frenzy, it was an
27:19
Speaker 3: Alfred Hitchcock movie, and it's about a serial killer that's
27:22
Speaker 3: going around London, very handsome, debonair, almost like a James
27:27
Speaker 3: Bond type character, you know, and he's picking up and
27:30
Speaker 3: he's seducing beautiful women and then murdering them. And Joel
27:34
Speaker 3: said that that was his very first, you know, really
27:39
Speaker 3: strong septual fantasy that stayed with him throughout his entire life.
27:45
Speaker 2: To Doctor Beryl and others, Joel Rifkin expresses expectations that
27:50
Speaker 2: his trial will receive widespread national attention, that he'll be
27:55
Speaker 2: written about, remembered, commodified. He talks about being feet in
28:00
Speaker 2: Serial Killer comic books and on t shirts.
28:03
Speaker 1: Now, of course that's perverse because if your big accomplishment
28:07
Speaker 1: is killing you know, a bunch of people who you
28:11
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, complete strangers, no relationship because they
28:15
Speaker 1: fit a type. You know, it speaks for itself, how
28:20
Speaker 1: you know, sort of depraved the behaviorism.
28:30
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen eighty nine, Rifkin is spending nights driving
28:35
Speaker 2: for hours, watching sex workers, spending what little money he
28:39
Speaker 2: has on repeated encounters. On an unknown date in early
28:44
Speaker 2: eighty nine, he picks up a woman he knows as Susie.
28:49
Speaker 2: Decades later, she'll be identified through DNA as Heidi Balch.
28:55
Speaker 2: At the time, like many in the Lower East Side,
28:57
Speaker 2: she's struggling with HIV and substance abuse. At the time,
29:03
Speaker 2: Rifkin's mother is away. He has the house to himself
29:06
Speaker 2: and he brings Heidi home, where he attempts to keep
29:09
Speaker 2: her close. He goes on cigarette runs, provides alcohol, television, drugs,
29:16
Speaker 2: and to his frustration, she spends most of the time sleeping.
29:22
Speaker 2: After about eleven hours, she asks Rifkin to drive her
29:26
Speaker 2: back to the city and he agrees. According to Rifkin,
29:30
Speaker 2: when her back is turned, he picks up a large
29:33
Speaker 2: object investigative notes listed as an artillery shell casing, and
29:39
Speaker 2: he strikes her in the back of the head, then
29:42
Speaker 2: restrains her from behind. Further notes indicate the cause of
29:46
Speaker 2: death is asphyxiation. And he said this was a regular
29:50
Speaker 2: thing he did, that he would bring these sex workers home.
29:53
Speaker 1: He did kill her in his mother's home, and boy
29:57
Speaker 1: was saddled with the the issue of how to dispose
30:03
Speaker 1: of her body.
30:04
Speaker 2: What follows is methodical. There's no complete medical examiner record
30:10
Speaker 2: because after the murder, Riffkin dismembers the body in the
30:14
Speaker 2: garage of his family home.
30:17
Speaker 1: I mean, you have no training as a butcher, no
30:19
Speaker 1: training as a surgeon or in the medical field at all,
30:24
Speaker 1: and then you kill someone in your mother's home. It's
30:28
Speaker 1: really it's almost it's outrageous when you really consider it,
30:32
Speaker 1: it's just really incredible. And then you decide to cut
30:37
Speaker 1: her up. How do you know that you could even
30:40
Speaker 1: do this? You know, it's really quite phenomenal. I mean,
30:44
Speaker 1: he knew himself better than anyone, I guess, and he
30:46
Speaker 1: knew he added in him.
30:49
Speaker 2: We know what happens next through subsequent discoveries, Rifkin drives
30:55
Speaker 2: into New Jersey and disposes of the remains along County
30:59
Speaker 2: Road six fifty. On March fifth, nineteen eighty nine, a
31:04
Speaker 2: head is discovered near the seventh hole of the Hopewell
31:07
Speaker 2: Valley golf Course, found by a player searching for a
31:11
Speaker 2: lost ball. Legs are recovered months later in Morris County.
31:17
Speaker 2: Local police investigate, but never come close to identifying either
31:21
Speaker 2: the victim or Rifkin. It's Joel Rifkin himself, who eventually
31:26
Speaker 2: fills in the gaps after his arrest.
31:29
Speaker 1: Sex workers they are the most vulnerable population that a
31:37
Speaker 1: serial killer could pray on because you know, usually is
31:44
Speaker 1: comorbid features like drug abuse or addiction. They're out at night,
31:50
Speaker 1: and as long as they don't attract attention, if they
31:53
Speaker 1: disappear a lot of times, you know, maybe one person
31:56
Speaker 1: takes note of it.
31:57
Speaker 2: That lack of response is what enables Rifkin because in
32:01
Speaker 2: the aftermath of the murder, Rifkin spends months fearing consequences. Later,
32:07
Speaker 2: he describes periods of terror, expecting to be caught, but
32:11
Speaker 2: nothing happens. There's no arrest, no connection, no escalation from
32:17
Speaker 2: law enforcement, and over time that fear fades. Eighteen months later,
32:23
Speaker 2: he repeats the pattern again. He picks up Julie Blackbird
32:28
Speaker 2: thirty one, a Texas native working as a street sex
32:32
Speaker 2: worker in Manhattan's Lower East Side. He brings the victim
32:36
Speaker 2: home and murders her in a similar fashion, and in
32:40
Speaker 2: this case, her disappearance is reported but not thoroughly investigated,
32:45
Speaker 2: in part due to her criminal record arrests for drug
32:48
Speaker 2: possession and prostitution dating back to nineteen eighty six. You
32:53
Speaker 2: have this vulnerable population.
32:55
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right, that is exactly what makes them vulnerable.
32:59
Speaker 4: We all know that that seems like at this point
33:01
Speaker 4: common sense. Given how many times this has happened, why
33:05
Speaker 4: do police not do something about it?
33:08
Speaker 1: Naturally, the police would have to snap into action and
33:12
Speaker 1: do something. But you know, it doesn't happen always. You know,
33:16
Speaker 1: they just shrug it off.
33:18
Speaker 4: You know.
33:19
Speaker 2: In speaking to Robert Maladinich, he recalls the frustration of
33:24
Speaker 2: frontline law enforcement firsthand, working as an NYPD officer at
33:29
Speaker 2: the time. He describes a lack of resources combined with
33:34
Speaker 2: political apathy.
33:35
Speaker 3: You would just arrest people, and it was, you know,
33:37
Speaker 3: the turnstile justice. You know, they'd be be arrested unless
33:42
Speaker 3: they unless they were georged with something really serious. They
33:45
Speaker 3: would be released on bail, which is happening again.
33:49
Speaker 2: I need to pause here because after this first incident,
33:52
Speaker 2: Rifkin kills at least fifteen more women in rapid succession,
33:58
Speaker 2: a span of roughly twenty four four months. Many of
34:01
Speaker 2: the details are missing, and that's because most of what
34:05
Speaker 2: we have comes from Rifkin himself, whose memory is inconsistent
34:11
Speaker 2: on names and dates. Also, many of the victims are
34:16
Speaker 2: never properly investigated. Some are never even reported missing. I
34:20
Speaker 2: spent hours trying to piece together Rifkin's timeline and It's
34:25
Speaker 2: incomplete and not meant to be comprehensive, but it points
34:29
Speaker 2: to something larger. Jurisdictions that don't communicate disappearances that just
34:36
Speaker 2: don't trigger urgency. Do you think he lost track of
34:40
Speaker 2: the number of victims.
34:41
Speaker 1: It didn't seem like that to me at the time.
34:43
Speaker 1: He was.
34:46
Speaker 3: Very clear.
34:47
Speaker 1: I mean, he's really clear on not so much their names,
34:51
Speaker 1: but where and when? Then where you dumped the bodies
34:55
Speaker 1: and stuff.
35:00
Speaker 2: In the summer of nineteen ninety one, Riffkin kills Barbara Jacobs,
35:04
Speaker 2: thirty one. He wraps her body in plastic and places
35:09
Speaker 2: it in the Hudson River. In September, he encounters Mary
35:14
Speaker 2: Ellen de Luca, twenty two. She's struggling with substance abuse.
35:19
Speaker 2: Her disappearance isn't immediately reported, as friends and family believe
35:24
Speaker 2: she's in rehab. Her skeletal remains are found months later
35:29
Speaker 2: by a man scavenging near West Point. Weeks later, Riffkin
35:34
Speaker 2: kills Yunlee, a sex worker with a history of solicitation.
35:38
Speaker 3: He picked her up on Long Island, but they wound
35:41
Speaker 3: up in a hotel, a cheap motel on Long Island.
35:45
Speaker 3: He killed her thoughtlessly, you know, he just killed her,
35:49
Speaker 3: not thinking I got to get this body out of him.
35:52
Speaker 3: So it was only after he murdered this woman had
35:55
Speaker 3: to sit laying in the bed in a cheap motel,
35:59
Speaker 3: that he went to a home depot, whatever the version
36:02
Speaker 3: of a home depot was back then, and bought a
36:04
Speaker 3: steamer trunk.
36:06
Speaker 2: Her body is found inside a steamer trunk in the
36:10
Speaker 2: East River on September twenty third. He repeats the pattern
36:15
Speaker 2: almost immediately, placing victims in steel drums. One is never identified,
36:21
Speaker 2: her remains never recovered. Another is discovered nearly a year later,
36:27
Speaker 2: but still remains unidentified to this day.
36:30
Speaker 1: I think there's a compulsive dimension to this that, yeah,
36:34
Speaker 1: this was highly gratifying, you know, you know we've talked
36:41
Speaker 1: about it gives someone like Cam a sense of omnipotence.
36:48
Speaker 1: It is sexually pleasing. And he narrowly escaped on a
36:55
Speaker 1: couple of occasions getting caught, And I think you probably
36:59
Speaker 1: fed his point of view that ugh it is he
37:07
Speaker 1: finally found his calling.
37:10
Speaker 2: In December of nineteen ninety one, Rifkin murders Lorraine or
37:14
Speaker 2: Vietro twenty eight, a former cheerleader struggling with bipolar disorder.
37:20
Speaker 2: This homicide occurs just days before Christmas. He places her
37:25
Speaker 2: body in a fifty five gallon oil drum and drops
37:28
Speaker 2: it into Coney Island Creek, where it remains undiscovered for
37:32
Speaker 2: more than six months. At this point, there's no task force,
37:37
Speaker 2: no media attention, and Rifkin he feels invisible. He acquires
37:44
Speaker 2: a copy of the book The Search for the Green
37:47
Speaker 2: River Killer, published in nineteen ninety one, and he begins
37:51
Speaker 2: to model himself after the unidentified offender later revealed to
37:56
Speaker 2: be Gary Ridgeway in Seattle. He takes cues from the book.
38:01
Speaker 2: He begins keeping trophies, and when investigators search his room
38:06
Speaker 2: years later, they find IDs, credit cards, licenses, library cards,
38:13
Speaker 2: items belonging to his victims.
38:16
Speaker 4: Serial killers, especially from the eighties and nineties, and Rifkin's
38:19
Speaker 4: a great example. They watch movies and read books about,
38:24
Speaker 4: you know, like the Green River Killer or Ted Manny,
38:26
Speaker 4: and then they they say, oh, you know, if I
38:29
Speaker 4: commit these violent acts, I could achieve this fame.
38:33
Speaker 1: This was kind of I guess, as good as it
38:37
Speaker 1: was going to get for him. And thus, you know,
38:40
Speaker 1: he was prepared to milk it, you know, at the
38:44
Speaker 1: time and enjoy the notoriety that came with it.
38:50
Speaker 2: The following year, Rifkin murders Ana Lopez, a sex worker
38:54
Speaker 2: struggling with addiction. Her body is found near Interstate eighty
38:59
Speaker 2: four on May twenty fifth, nineteen ninety two. That July,
39:04
Speaker 2: he kills Violet O'Neill, twenty one, who uses the nickname Tiny.
39:10
Speaker 2: Her grandmother, circulates missing posters in the Lower east Side
39:14
Speaker 2: when police fail to investigate her disappearance. Her dismembered remains
39:20
Speaker 2: are recovered shortly after the murder, but police never connect
39:24
Speaker 2: them to her identity until Rifkin's arrest. Rifkin then murders
39:30
Speaker 2: Mary Anne Holloman thirty nine, who leaves a known drug
39:34
Speaker 2: house in the Lower east Side and is never seen again.
39:38
Speaker 2: Authorities do not identify her until after Rifkin confesses, but
39:43
Speaker 2: by this point Rifkin has completely dehumanized his interactions with
39:48
Speaker 2: these women.
39:50
Speaker 3: He said the way that he absolved himself from any
39:54
Speaker 3: responsibility was you love to make wartime and like sports analogies.
40:00
Speaker 3: He said, It's like in the war when you shoot
40:03
Speaker 3: down a plane or you or you torpedo ship. You
40:08
Speaker 3: don't even think of the humans that are in that
40:10
Speaker 3: ship and their families and everything. You only think of
40:14
Speaker 3: the ship that was sunk and the plane that was shot.
40:17
Speaker 2: Down, and then there's Jenny Soto. Her remains are found
40:24
Speaker 2: along the Harlem River in the South Bronx on November eighteenth,
40:29
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two. Her brother later reports that detectives dismiss
40:34
Speaker 2: her as a sex worker, a claim disputed by others
40:38
Speaker 2: in her life. According to the family, detectives leave on
40:42
Speaker 2: vacation within days of the homicide and never follow up.
40:47
Speaker 2: A year later, they receive a courtesy call informing them
40:51
Speaker 2: that Rifkin has admitted to the murder.
40:54
Speaker 1: He would have sex and then he would kill them.
40:58
Speaker 1: I remember him telling me that he would then have
41:00
Speaker 1: sex sometimes with them again after killing him. And then
41:05
Speaker 1: there were a couple of occasions where he literally had
41:08
Speaker 1: a body in his car and he was gonna dump it,
41:12
Speaker 1: and then a cop actually confronted him and what are
41:16
Speaker 1: you doing over here? And you know, he had the
41:20
Speaker 1: ability not to fall apart and said some kind of
41:26
Speaker 1: bull I don't know. He was able to speak quickly,
41:30
Speaker 1: and the cop went away.
41:33
Speaker 2: On July sixth, nineteen ninety three, Rifkin murders Mary Catherine Williams,
41:38
Speaker 2: thirty one, from North Carolina, Her body is found days
41:42
Speaker 2: later in an oil drum near Brooklyn. Rifkin omits this
41:47
Speaker 2: homicide from his confession after his arrest, but police are
41:51
Speaker 2: able to connect it after finding her credit cards among
41:54
Speaker 2: the items in its bedroom. Rifkin also kills outside the past.
42:00
Speaker 2: In one instance, at least Leah Evans, twenty eight years old,
42:04
Speaker 2: a mother of two from Brooklyn, not a sex worker,
42:07
Speaker 2: Rifkin leaves her body in a rural area of Northampton.
42:12
Speaker 2: Her skeletal remains are found months later. In April or
42:17
Speaker 2: May of nineteen ninety two, he kills twenty five year
42:21
Speaker 2: old Iris Sanchez. Her disappearance is reported, but the investigation
42:27
Speaker 2: is once again minimal. When Rifkin is arrested, he leads
42:31
Speaker 2: police to an area surrounding JFK Airport, where her remains
42:36
Speaker 2: are found under a mattress, undisturbed from where Rifkin left them,
42:42
Speaker 2: the same pattern it repeats with Lauren Marquez twenty eight.
42:47
Speaker 2: The date of her death is unknown, but after his arrest,
42:51
Speaker 2: Rifkin again directs authorities to her undiscovered body and a
42:55
Speaker 2: heavily wooded area.
42:57
Speaker 1: The question becomes, you know is there a concerted and
43:02
Speaker 1: well coordinated communication system among the police, so that you know,
43:08
Speaker 1: if someone makes it complain to a precinct X, and
43:12
Speaker 1: then another complaint comes in to precinct, why do they
43:18
Speaker 1: put two and two together and say, oh, gee, prostitute missing.
43:23
Speaker 1: You know, maybe there's a pattern, and I think because
43:26
Speaker 1: of you know, you want to call it a societal
43:30
Speaker 1: prejudice or you know, a sense that you know, if
43:34
Speaker 1: these women are out there working as hookers and their
43:38
Speaker 1: drug addicts, you know, it's not the same thing as
43:44
Speaker 1: you know, a high school girl gone missing, you know,
43:49
Speaker 1: from an affluent neighborhood, where naturally the police would have
43:54
Speaker 1: to snap into action and do something.
44:03
Speaker 2: Rifkin's downfall begins in June of nineteen ninety three. He
44:08
Speaker 2: picks up twenty two year old Tiffany Bresciani in the
44:11
Speaker 2: East Village, the one time girlfriend of vocalist daven Surgent,
44:16
Speaker 2: a member of the nineteen eighties punk band Reagan Youth.
44:20
Speaker 2: Bresciani will be Rifkin's final victim. He transports her body
44:25
Speaker 2: to his East Meadow home, and in the end it's
44:28
Speaker 2: Rifkin himself who sets everything in motion. Before leaving to
44:33
Speaker 2: dispose of the body, he reattaches a license plate to
44:38
Speaker 2: his truck, but he doesn't secure it properly and it
44:41
Speaker 2: falls off as he's driving. When a state trooper spots
44:46
Speaker 2: the missing plate and attempts to pull him over. Rifkin
44:49
Speaker 2: is completely unaware of the mistake and he flees a trooper.
44:54
Speaker 1: State trooper on the parkway noticed him driving by and
44:58
Speaker 1: he didn't have a license plate on the back of
45:00
Speaker 1: his truck, and put on the siren and then proceeded
45:04
Speaker 1: to have them on chase, a high speed chase with
45:08
Speaker 1: him not knowing who he was chasing, not knowing that
45:12
Speaker 1: there was a corpse in the back of the truck.
45:16
Speaker 2: And there's something else something I found in Rifkin's arrest reports.
45:21
Speaker 2: At the time of his arrest, it's noted that he
45:23
Speaker 2: has nogzema skin cream under his nose, and it immediately
45:29
Speaker 2: reminded me of a scene from Silence of the Lambs,
45:32
Speaker 2: And digging further, I actually found a reference from Rifkin
45:36
Speaker 2: himself where he admits that's exactly where he got the idea.
45:41
Speaker 2: I'm going to read it to you quote Silence of
45:44
Speaker 2: the Lambs is where he got the idea to use
45:46
Speaker 2: nogzema to mask the odor of Bresciani's decomposing body when
45:51
Speaker 2: he removed it from his garage on June twenty eighth,
45:55
Speaker 2: the night of his arrest.
45:57
Speaker 4: I found a passage where he spoke about watching Silence
46:02
Speaker 4: of the Lambs right and watching the autosy scene in
46:06
Speaker 4: which Jody Foster puts the noxyma under her nose. I
46:10
Speaker 4: don't even remember this scene so that she can withstand
46:15
Speaker 4: the smell of the body.
46:16
Speaker 1: I remember I'm saying that he put the noxima in
46:18
Speaker 1: his nose, but I know he had noxima in his
46:22
Speaker 1: nostrils when he got caught, and he was driving around
46:26
Speaker 1: with a rapidly decomposing body in the back of his truck.
46:32
Speaker 3: Once his name was released, I was flabber guest, and
46:36
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe that it was that it was the
46:38
Speaker 3: same guy. But it was Joe Rifkin from Each Meadow
46:41
Speaker 3: in New York, so I knew immediately it was, you know,
46:44
Speaker 3: my guy.
46:46
Speaker 2: After his arrest, Rifkin spends an extensive amount of time
46:50
Speaker 2: speaking with authorities trying to reconstruct a timeline of his crimes.
46:56
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden he becomes, you know, you know,
47:01
Speaker 1: a cause celeb in a sense, in a perverse.
47:04
Speaker 3: Way, you know.
47:05
Speaker 2: And that's the part that stands out, because when Rifkin
47:08
Speaker 2: is arrested, there's something else there, not relief recognition. He speaks, openly, engages,
47:16
Speaker 2: participates in the analysis of what he's done. It's to
47:20
Speaker 2: ensure that he becomes more than what he really is.
47:24
Speaker 1: Who is working as a landscaper, really and really not
47:29
Speaker 1: typical for you know, a nice Jewish boy from Long Island,
47:35
Speaker 1: you know, becoming like a landscaper living with his mother.
47:39
Speaker 2: For someone who struggled to establish any identity, this becomes one.
47:45
Speaker 2: Rifkin's trial begins in nineteen ninety four in Nassau County.
47:50
Speaker 2: Prosecutors layout a pattern victims, locations, timelines, much of it
47:56
Speaker 2: coming from Rifkin himself, his confessions corroborated by evidence recovered
48:03
Speaker 2: across multiple jurisdictions. During the trial, he attempts to plead insanity,
48:09
Speaker 2: but when that fails, he's convicted in stages, pleading guilty
48:14
Speaker 2: to multiple counts to avoid further trials. By nineteen ninety six,
48:20
Speaker 2: Rifkin is sentenced to a total of two hundred and
48:23
Speaker 2: three years to life in prison.
48:26
Speaker 1: His life has not been like a colamorous life since
48:31
Speaker 1: he was arrested. From the time he was arrested, he's
48:34
Speaker 1: never been free again for the rest of his life.
48:38
Speaker 1: And you know the reality is he'll die in prison.
48:42
Speaker 1: He's in segregated population, I'm sure, because you know he'd
48:49
Speaker 1: be an obvious target. I think he's up in Attica
48:52
Speaker 1: right now. He's in upstate New York.
48:55
Speaker 2: Rifkin isn't unique, Men like him operate under the radar
49:00
Speaker 2: because they target vulnerable populations, people they know won't be
49:04
Speaker 2: immediately missed. They rely on apathy, on jurisdictions that don't communicate,
49:11
Speaker 2: on cases that don't trigger urgency, and more often than not,
49:17
Speaker 2: they're right. But that's nothing new. By the nineteen eighties
49:21
Speaker 2: and nineties, law enforcement understood this pattern. They began to
49:26
Speaker 2: study these offenders, to define them, profile them, give them
49:30
Speaker 2: a name, serial killers. But in doing that, the focus
49:35
Speaker 2: shifted away from the victims and on to the offenders.
49:40
Speaker 2: And that's the mistake they made because it created something else,
49:45
Speaker 2: a template, a model of behavior, a framework that can
49:49
Speaker 2: be studied, understood, but also imitated. In the same way
49:56
Speaker 2: earlier generations had detective magazines, this era I had books, films,
50:02
Speaker 2: media built around the idea of serial killers.
50:06
Speaker 4: Hey, how many.
50:06
Speaker 3: People did Rifkins strangle?
50:07
Speaker 1: Eighteen? Yeah, eighteen strangles?
50:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, you know why Rifkin was a serial killer
50:12
Speaker 3: because he was adopted. He would get very enthusiastic and
50:17
Speaker 3: very kind of hyped up and energetic when talking about
50:23
Speaker 3: the Seinfeld episode. The fact that he seem so excited
50:30
Speaker 3: about being a subject of a Seinfeld episode makes me
50:34
Speaker 3: think he does enjoy me renowned.
50:38
Speaker 2: And for someone like Rifkin, that didn't just explain the behavior,
50:42
Speaker 2: It gave it a shape. It gave it direction, not
50:46
Speaker 2: just in a way to act, but in a way
50:49
Speaker 2: to be seen. Before we wrap a few show notes,
50:58
Speaker 2: I had a great conversation and with doctor Beryl, and
51:01
Speaker 2: we're going to post the full interview inside Unmarked case Files,
51:04
Speaker 2: our research portal where you can examine the evidence for yourself,
51:09
Speaker 2: along with early and ad free episodes. Next, my books,
51:14
Speaker 2: I am an independent author, and my true crime book
51:17
Speaker 2: about Charles Manson, including research and interviews with Manson himself,
51:22
Speaker 2: is available on Kindle and Amazon. Also, my grim dark
51:28
Speaker 2: fantasy A Plague of Steel, the first in a series
51:31
Speaker 2: called Sons of the Tempering, is available on Kindle, Amazon,
51:36
Speaker 2: and Kindle unlimited. It's very much in that grim dark
51:40
Speaker 2: fantasy lane books I read all the time. This episode
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Speaker 2: of Unmarked was produced by John Dido and edited by
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Speaker 2: Dave Alderson. Our additional producer is Jesse Demery. And I
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Speaker 2: know I say these names every week, but this is
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Speaker 2: a real team and we are overwhelmed and thankful for
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Speaker 2: the response we're getting to the podcast, so thank you.
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Speaker 2: Until next week, this is Unmarked.