Cold Case Files: The Rifkin Murders | show | 2023 | Official Clip
Cold Case Files: The Rifkin Murders" documents the real-time New York State Police cold case investigation into the two | dHNfWjZpUUhVSkVIYVU
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00:00 ♪♪
00:08 I'm now in a little cage,
00:10 and it's, "How did I get here?
00:12 How did they end up dead?
00:15 What happened?"
00:18 And I'm trying to make sense out of it.
00:20 I'm still trying to make sense out of it.
00:23 It didn't start out this way.
00:25 I've always been interested in Joel Rifkin's story
00:29 because I find it so unusual compared to what you would think
00:35 the life of a serial killer was like.
00:38 I think a lot of people, myself included,
00:40 think that to become a serial killer,
00:43 you need to be abused.
00:46 But he wasn't abused.
00:47 He came from what would be considered a good home.
00:50 He grew up in East Meadow, New York,
00:52 which is a suburb in Long Island.
00:55 His mother gave me home movies of Rifkin
00:58 growing up as a kid,
00:59 and it's filled with birthday parties,
01:04 visits to the park and playing with kids.
01:08 So he seemed to have a very normal and loving childhood.
01:12 ♪♪
01:16 His parents worked hard to give him
01:18 all the things he needed in life to succeed,
01:20 and yet he still became a serial killer.
01:25 And so after he was arrested, anyone that knew Rifkin
01:28 was completely surprised by the fact
01:30 that this mild-mannered kid that had grown up in East Meadow
01:34 was a serial killer that was living amongst them.
01:39 I've seen reports about it and read articles about it.
01:42 It's just not the Joel I could ever imagine.
01:47 He was kind of quiet, reserved, but to me, very friendly.
01:54 He wasn't a scary person at all.
01:57 He wasn't threatening to anybody or anything.
02:00 The person I knew was not an evil person.
02:03 He was just a soft-spoken, easygoing, polite guy who,
02:11 if a neighbor came home, if it was an older woman,
02:14 he would offer to help carry her packages.
02:17 There was literally nothing about this man
02:21 that would have led me to believe
02:23 that he would have ever done what he did.
02:27 I think that's what made it a shock
02:30 to everybody who knew him,
02:32 that it was almost like a Jekyll and Hyde thing.
02:36 The last time that I was ever with him was in '84.
02:41 Literally, the next time I heard his name
02:45 was that night on CNN nine years later.
02:48 There was an arrest of Joel Rifkin for murder.
02:52 I remember this like it was yesterday.
02:55 I hear the name Joel Rifkin,
02:59 and a chill goes up my back.
03:03 And on the screen,
03:05 law enforcement is bringing him into a police station.
03:10 ♪♪
03:13 And then I'm like, "Oh, my God, it's him."
03:17 It was not just shocking, which it clearly was,
03:19 but it was really sad.
03:21 ♪♪
03:24 I don't think Joel was just a maniacal-type person
03:29 that was destined to murder people.
03:33 I just think, you know, something happened,
03:36 clicked in his mind.
03:37 He's been asked why he's done it,
03:39 and every time I ever hear him ask that,
03:41 he kind of dodges the question.
03:44 He kind of says, "I really don't know."
03:47 And I can tell you this -- I'm certain that he does know,
03:51 but he just doesn't want to tell.
03:53 ♪♪
03:56 You don't want to say there is a profile of a serial killer,
03:59 but Rifkin checked a lot of the boxes that we find commonly.
04:04 Most serial killers
04:06 certainly have a degree of psychopathy and narcissism.
04:10 When you look at Rifkin's crimes,
04:12 I think that psychopathy, you can see that total disregard
04:16 for human life, for the value of these women.
04:19 These were just objects to him to meet his needs.
04:24 The narcissism, I think, is there, too,
04:27 because he thinks he's smarter than everyone
04:29 by doing this and getting away with this.
04:32 But with these serial killers,
04:34 we really don't know where this desire to engage
04:38 in this extremely violent pathological behavior comes from.
04:44 We know it's multi-determined.
04:45 There can be environmental influences,
04:49 contextual influences.
04:50 There can be genetic predispositions.
04:54 I talk about the nature-nurture tango.
04:56 It's a dance between the two,
04:59 and we don't really know how it all comes together.
05:04 But it becomes this combustible combination of these things
05:09 that result in Rifkin.
05:14 An analogy that I use a lot in trying to explain this --
05:18 so, you make a cake, all right?
05:21 And you mix up the batter,
05:25 and you put the cake in the oven,
05:26 and you get it out, and you realize,
05:29 "I didn't put any sugar in the cake.
05:33 How am I gonna -- Am I gonna massage that in the cake now?
05:36 Am I gonna be able to rub that sugar?"
05:38 No, no, you're not.
05:40 Or you pour motor oil in the batter.
05:45 How am I gonna get the motor oil out of the cake?
05:48 Well, you're not.
05:49 And it's the same with these guys.
05:51 They either are missing something they need
05:54 or they have something they don't need.
05:56 And right now, we don't know how to make it right.
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