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NARRATOR: The most notoriouskillers hide in plain sight,
free to kill and kill again.
But most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it's their foolishmistakes that get them caught.
NARRATOR: New Jersey, March 5th, 1989,
in the quiet town of Hopewell, a golfer
tees off for an early Sunday morning round.
Just one of those days, damp, cold.
People should not havebeen out golfing that day.
NARRATOR: Whilest looking forthis ball in the undergrowth,
the golfer makes a horrific discovery,
the mangled, decapitated head of a young woman.
Just happened that hesliced his ball into the area
where the head was laying.
NARRATOR: Police are called to investigate
the gruesome murder.
Leading the team is Detective Bruce Carnell.
We get down there and I look at it,
and I was able to touch andfeel and knew if I hit it,
it was a real head.
The eyes are open and fixed.
The jaw had been cut, and there was
like little marks on the face,cuts, and scratches, and all.
It's a chilling sight.
NARRATOR: The head is only a few hours old.
I believe our medical examiner placed
the time of death probably12 to 24 hours prior to us
finding the head.
NARRATOR: The killer knew what he was doing.
Identifying the head from dentalrecords would be impossible.
All the teeth had been removed.
Actually, you could see where they
pulled them out like pliers,and scratched jaw bone, and all.
NARRATOR: Police combed thearea for any clues that will
help them track the killer.
And no other evidence, no other body parts,
and no other informationthat could lead us to who
did this gruesome murder.
NARRATOR: One month later, a member of the public
finds a pair of legs in Jefferson township,
80 miles north of Hopewell.
We'd use comparisons of knifemarks on the neck and the legs,
and it appears the same instrument was used.
NARRATOR: DNA testing confirms the legs
and severed head belong to the same victim,
but figuring out who thevictim is proves difficult.
We found that the head was positive for HIV.
It was narcotics in the tissue.
And also we had a reconstruction done.
We did comparisons in a lot ofmissing persons in that area,
and they all turned up negative.
NARRATOR: With no identity for the victim
and no leads on the killer,the case quickly goes cold.
I always kept in the back of my mind
she's someone's daughter,and they need to know or find
out what happened to her.
NARRATOR: The mystery victim'skiller remains on the loose.
Four years later, two New York State
troopers on a routine patrol in Long Island.
On the night of June the28th, 1993, trooper Sean Rain
and Deborah Spogano were onpatrol on the Southern State
Parkway when they noticeda pickup truck driving
along a little erratically.
NARRATOR: Trooper Rain pullsup closer to investigate.
He notices that there'sno license plate on the car,
and he turns his lights on.
NARRATOR: But the drive doesn't pull over.
He hits the gas and speeds off.
This chase ensued for about a half hour,
covered about 30 miles, a very high speed chase.
Where they ended upchasing this vehicle until it
crashed near the steps of the courthouse.
NARRATOR: When police movein to make the arrest,
the driver offers no resistance.
He hands over his license,which identifies him
as 34-year-old Joel Rifkin, arecently unemployed gardener
from East Meadow, Long Island.
But they smell something.
They smell something that policeofficers are familiar with.
Immediately they know that thisis far, far more than simply
a routine stop.
NARRATOR: As the trooper peels back a blue tarp,
he discovers the naked decomposing
body of a young woman.
It is obvious she has beendead for several days.
Rifkin is immediately taken toa police station in Farmingdale
on suspicion of murder.
Senior investigator StevenLouder leads the interrogation.
When I first see Joel Rifkin,he's in the interrogation
room awaiting us.
He was pretty sullen.
He wasn't very, very demonstrative
at all while he was there.
He seemed resigned to the fact,well, we had him with the body,
so he pretty much knew that,you know, what faced him ahead.
But we're just curious to talk to him,
and get more background, andget some more information.
We wanted a confession.
NARRATOR: Rifkin tells them that he had picked
up a woman in lower Manhattan.
He took her to a parking lotwhere he paid her for sex,
and then he strangled her.
He was not emotional at all.
He was dealing in a very matter of fact way.
NARRATOR: As Rifkin recounts the murder,
he admits to keeping some ofhis victim's personal items.
This startling admission sounds alarm bells.
Louder knows this is a traitcommon to serial killers.
He now suspects that this murdermay have been one of many.
We asked the question, was it more than 50,
was it more than 20, was it more than 30?
NARRATOR: Rifkin stuns police, as just
hours after being arrested he confesses
to a total of 17 murders overa four year killing spree.
We don't have a reaction in the room,
in the interview room, butit was quite surprising.
We didn't expect that.
NARRATOR: When the media get hold of the story,
there's a feeding frenzy.
NEWS REPORTER: If the allegations against him
are true, 34-year-oldJoel Rifkin would probably
be the most prolific serial killer in New York state
history, and one of the most prolific
in the nation's history.
NARRATOR: Rifkin's claims proved true.
He gives police detailed notes that lead
them to several of his victims.
Rifkin, it turns out, is the real deal.
It was a chance minor traffic violation
that led police to the door of New York's
most prolific serial killer.
Knowing the game is up, Rifkin recalls
all of his horrificmurders in clinical detail.
Once he started talking, it'salmost like he was relieved.
He had to write out, for us, his list.
And he was able to recall with detail
when, who, what he kept from his victim,
and where he had placed them.
He actually mapped it out for us,
and he led us to a few bodies that
had not been discovered yet.
NARRATOR: Rifkin tells police that he
made his first kill four yearsprior to his eventual arrest.
Joel's first killing took place around 1988.
He picked up a woman by thename of Susie in Manhattan,
and he took her home, whichwas his mother's home.
Mother had been away on a vacation.
He bought her drugs on the way home.
And they had had sex.
And she was very clearly a raging drug addict.
And she didn't care about the sex.
All she wanted was for him to go out
and to score more drugs for her.
NARRATOR: The girl's demands formore drugs infuriated Rifkin.
All he wants is more sex.
All of a sudden, the urge just overcame
him to kill this woman.
DR. BARBARA KIRWIN: And hejust impulsively grabbed
a huge World War II howitzer shell.
And he just started beating her with it
on the back of her head.
He kept beating her.
He thought she was dead.
And he was running aroundthis house in a panic.
NARRATOR: But Susie is still alive.
She fights back with all her might.
When Rifkin tries to move her body,
he pins her down and strangles her to death.
At that point, all he could think of
is what's my mother goingto say when she comes back?
NARRATOR: Despite this being his first kill,
he seems to instinctivelyknow what to do.
Rifkin drags Susie's body to the basement
and proceeds to systematically dismember
her with a small hobby knife.
He dismembers her body with a kind
of absolute cool indifference, you know,
that he described as beingequivalent to dissecting
a frog in a biology class.
NARRATOR: Susie's was just thefirst of many body disposals.
In the eight hourinterrogation, Rifkin confesses
to 16 more brutal murders.
From what he said to me is he confessed
to the strangling of 17 prostitutes in exchange
for a tuna fish salad sandwich.
NARRATOR: Forensic psychologist Dr.
Barbara Kirwin was brought in todo a psychological evaluation.
When I first came in to see Joel Rifkin,
it was a highly notorious case.
Hell, there was a lot of security at the jail.
There were a lot of reporters.
There was brown paper put all over the glass,
so that guards wouldn't seein to what we were doing.
Joel Rifkin had murdered 17 women,
and here I was going intothis small room with him.
Was he somebody who was so psychotic
that he was going to lungeacross the examining table
and strangle me?
I had no idea.
NARRATOR: Despite her concerns,Kirwin ends up spending
56 hours examining Rifkin.
Examining him was like a travelogue
into the desert of his mind and spirit.
There was some connection toemotions that wasn't there.
He talked about the murdersas if one were reciting
the grocery list, a quart of milk,
I put my hands around herthroat, a loaf of bread,
I strangled her.
He had no horror, he had noremorse, he had no emotions,
he was a house that nobody lived in.
NARRATOR: Kirwin hadexpected to diagnose Rifkin
as a sane sexual sadistwho was in complete control
of his actions.
When I did his psychologicaltesting, I was astounded.
His scores were elevated off the scale.
They were like hospitalizedviolent schizophrenics.
NARRATOR: Kirwin diagnoses Rifkin
as a paranoid schizophrenicwho was acting
on uncontrollable impulses.
Rifkin was a veritable posterchild for the insanity defense.
He did not really appear to knowthe gravity or the consequences
of his actions.
NARRATOR: Kirwin must nowprobe into Rifkin's past
to find out if he was born or made this way.
Whenever we look at any kind of human behavior,
and particularly when we'relooking at such horrific
and abhorrent human behavior,we want to weigh how much of it
is genetics, how much of itis nature, how much of it
is environment, nurture?
NARRATOR: Rifkin was bornon the 20th of January, 1959
to an unmarried couple unable to keep him.
He is soon adopted by Bernard and Jean
Rifkin, a childless couplefrom upstate New York.
Three years later, the Rifkin'sadopt a daughter and move
to East Meadow, a middle classneighborhood in Long Island.
His father was successful,and bright, and very community
oriented to the outside world.
But inside the home, he wascritical, he was detached,
he was a very tough taskmaster.
NARRATOR: Despite having a high IQ,
Joel is dyslexic and struggles academically.
His father would sit down and try
to do math problems with him.
But the father would get very frustrated,
and probably didn't quiteunderstand dyslexia,
as few people did back then.
Joel admired his father tremendously,
and wanted his father's approval,
and wanted to be successfulin his father's eyes.
And I don't think he ever was.
NARRATOR: But Joel's troubles at home
are nothing compared to what heis confronted with at school.
Joel Rifkin was a weird kind of child.
He was kind of goofy.
He was always kind of a social outcast.
And his very earliest memories of interacting
with other children was of being picked on
and not being accepted into the group.
NARRATOR: Rifkin's classmatesphysically and psychologically
bully him on a daily basis.
"True Crime" author Harold Schechter
believes this had a profoundeffect on the young Rifkin.
If you fill a child withfeelings of incredible self
hatred and worthlessness, they're
going to grow up hating the world
and wanting to inflict some pain on the world,
partly as revenge, partlybecause they just grow up
feeling that human relationships, you know,
are based on that kind of infliction of pain.
NARRATOR: In 1978, Rifkin leavesschool and heads to university,
where he meets Bob Mladinich.
The Rifkin that I knewin my-- maybe my early 20s,
he had a tremendous amount ofability and potential to have
a career as a photographer.
NARRATOR: But despiteexcelling at photography,
Rifkin drops out and beginsa cycle of dead end jobs.
His social life is as much of a failure
as his professional life.
Joel Rifkin had verylittle experience with girls.
He was not appealing.
He was peculiar.
If he went into a bar or a club, the women were
going to run the other way.
His social sense would be oneof just simply pushing himself
in front of a female and,you know, accept me as I am,
smelly, unkempt, and badly dressed.
NARRATOR: Criminalpsychologist David Holmes
believes this social incompetence
leads Rifkin to shuthimself off from reality.
Joel Rifkin, by virtue of hisinability to relate socially,
was living in anentirely different world.
He withdrew more and more into a little
fantasy world that was Joel Rifkin's and only
Joel Rifkin's.
NARRATOR: Influenced by films and television,
he starts to fantasize about strangling women.
I would suspect that hewas filled with all kinds
of sexual insecurities.
I think that leads people like Rifkin
to seek out women that, on somelevel, they feel they deserve.
NARRATOR: Unable to get a real girlfriend,
Rifkin resorts to trolling the streets
of New York for prostitutes.
Every last dime was spent on women.
He would literally go out everynight, or at least five or six
nights a week, and troll aroundthe five boroughs of New York
City looking for prostitutes.
When he realized that, you know,
he could pick up prostitutesand they would actually
be OK with him, he liked the idea
that he could relate tosomeone without being social,
without having to actuallyengage this person properly.
NARRATOR: But even withdrug addicted prostitutes,
Rifkin proves to be completely inept.
Most of them took advantageof him in one way or another,
because they just wanted to get it
over with and get more drugs.
So I think he developed, asmuch as he had an obsession
for them, I think, withoutquestion, that he developed
a hatred for prostitutes.
NARRATOR: As this hatred intensifies,
the boundary between hisfantasy worlds and reality
becomes increasingly blurred.
He fantasized about killingevery single one of them.
He said that fantasy of killing them,
in his words, jazzed up the evening.
NARRATOR: Rifkin is leadinga secret double life
right under the nose of his entire family.
Joel was living like achild under his parents roof.
His father would periodicallyget on him, make him clean up,
force him to get a job, forcehim to clean out the cars.
And so his father functionedas almost a guide person that
kept Joel within very narrow confines
away from doing whatever thesehorrendous fantasies were.
NARRATOR: Then in February'87, tragedy strikes.
His father was diagnosed with cancer
and commits suicide with a lethal overdose
of barbiturates.
Rifkin came down to the table and he
saw his dad slumped over.
And he went and he kind ofpushed him, and he nudged him,
and then his dad kind ofkeeled over and he realized
that his father was dead.
As soon as his father passed away,
everything was over for Joel.
There were no controls.
NARRATOR: Over the next two years,
Rifkin becomes increasinglydetached from reality.
Years of pent up anger andhumiliation crave release.
And in March 1989, without hisfather to keep him in check,
Rifkin finally breaks.
He flips when a prostitute called Susie
demands he buys her more drugs.
At that point, he probablygot that thrill of control,
of dominating another person,that goes way beyond sex,
that fits into his little non-emotional
world as being a high point.
NARRATOR: In an instant, he transforms
from a perpetual victiminto a cold blooded killer.
He bagged her body parts in different bags
and threw them, some ofthem into the river in New
York City, and he threw her headin a golf course in New Jersey.
NARRATOR: Her head is found just hours later,
but Rifkin has left no clues.
Rifkin, a man who has never committed
a serious crime before, disposes of the corpse
like a seasoned pro.
This person who hadnever succeeded in anything
suddenly discovered this amazingtalent for body disposal.
NARRATOR: Rifkin has finallyfound something he can do
with conviction and expertise.
His reign of terror has begun.
Joel Rifkin has a dark secret.
He has killed a prostitute called
Susie in his family home.
After Joel committed his first murder,
he was so frozen with fear for several weeks,
he vowed that he would nevervisit another prostitute,
and definitely he wouldnever kill another person.
But after a couple of weeks,that fear subsided, and he
started fantasizing once again.
He became comfortable with the fantasy once again.
NARRATOR: Rifkin begins to seekthe services of prostitutes
once again.
And for over a year and a half,he resists the urge to kill.
But in the fall of 1990, hismother goes away on vacation.
Rifkin brings home a youngprostitute, Julie Blackbird.
They had sex.
And then they wanted to have more sex,
but she wanted more money.
So Joel said we'll drive to the ATM machine.
I'll get you more money.
They drove to the bank about 8:00 AM,
but the bank was not open yet.
When they came back to the houseto wait for the bank to open,
Joel got the compulsion onceagain to kill this woman.
NARRATOR: With no money for sex, Rifkin snaps.
He grabs an old piece of woodand beats Julie to death.
He said lightning struck him, and then he
was like a lightning strike to his victims,
that it was that unpredictable, that it
was that random that it didn'tfollow any logic for him.
He was adamant about thefact that had the bank been
open when they went to getthe money the first time,
she would still be alive today.
NARRATOR: Determined thatJulie's body should never
surface, he dismembers the corpse,
wraps up the separate body parts,
and weighs them down with concrete.
He then throws them into the East
River and the Brooklyn Canal.
Julie's remains have never been found.
In the months after Julie's murder,
Rifkin continues tobring several prostitutes
to his family home in East Meadow,
but they all leave unharmed.
There was no rhyme or reason to it.
There was no pattern to the girls.
They weren't shortbrunettes or tall blondes.
They were simply available.
It was opportunistic.
They were unprotected.
They were the people who he could get,
who would approach the vehiclewhen he called them over.
NARRATOR: But his obsession with murder
continues to consume his thoughts.
Rifkin was psychopathic.
He clearly had a lack ofempathy, a callousness, a lack
of emotional feeling for other people,
and probably for himself at that time.
NARRATOR: Kirwin believes hisproblems were even greater.
Rifkin told her he was hearing voices.
He heard something say to himin his head, a voice, yes, no.
He understood that ifthe voice stopped on yes,
that was when he was to increasethe pressure around the girl's
neck and crush her windpipe.
But if the voice said no, he relaxed his grip
and there were several girls,who were potential victims, who
were lucky.
The voice that night said no.
NARRATOR: But on July 13th, 1991,
Rifkin finally acts out his strangulation
fantasy with his third victim,31-year-old Barbara Jacobs.
Put off by the thoughtsof another dismemberment,
he dumped her body whole into the Hudson River.
Jacobs' body is found just hours later.
But by this point,Rifkin doesn't even care.
After that third killing, hesaid there was an accelerated
period where I believehe did about four or five
in a relatively short periodof time, a couple of months.
NARRATOR: Rifkin has developed an addition for killing.
He felt that he was justout of control at that point.
His appetite for the killing became
even more insatiable than hisappetite for the actual sex.
I think Rifkin was alwayssearching for that rush
that he got during the first killing.
It was a sense of power over someone else,
being in control ofsomeone, momentarily even,
in a very cold and dispassionate way that actually gave
him the impetus to carry on.
NARRATOR: Rifkin has becomean efficient, cold-blooded
serial killer.
Like other serial killers,he keeps his victims'
personal items as mementos.
He would have realized thathaving items from each victim
meant he could revisit the whole thing,
go over the thrill again by having a memento,
something that he can use toremember the detail of the act.
NARRATOR: As Rifkin continues to kill,
he becomes more adept at disposing
of his victims' bodies.
Some of the ways that heactually disposed of the bodies
were things that he hadseen on television shows.
One of the bodies he dismemberedand he put in a 55 gallon oil
drum.
And he had seen that on a popular crime show.
There was one time where hedrove up to northern Manhattan.
And he drove to a wooded area that
was-- little cliff over looking some water,
hurled the body into the water.
And as he was walking out of this brush,
these two cops had seen his car and they were
investigating the flashlights.
NARRATOR: Rifkin tellspolice that he is scavenging
for pieces of scrap metal.
They believe his story and lethim go with just a warning,
but his close call with the note does
nothing to stop his insatiableappetite for murder.
By the end of 1991, his bodycount has reached seven.
Preying on the most vulnerable in society
means that often theirdisappearances go unnoticed.
At that time, New YorkCity was a little seedier,
much seedy than it is now.
And these girls inhabitedthat underbelly of the city.
So people not missing them,people not paying attention
to them, people going about their business
and not looking at them, because they're
looking down their nose at them, so that
makes them very vulnerable.
NARRATOR: 1992 sees Rifkin continue
his sick killing spree.
Although some of his victims'corpses are being discovered,
it is impossible to link them back to one killer.
Well, a lot of these, the bodies,
when we found them were in nocondition to be identified--
really identify.
A lot of them were decompositioned
And DNA wasn't as advanced as it is now.
Although each one of thewomen were prostitutes,
each one of the women were strangled to death,
the disposal of the bodies was different,
so there was no reason to think that this
was the work of one person.
NARRATOR: In just one bloody year,
Rifkin's rampage sees him takethe lives of seven more girls.
It is kind of extraordinary, you know,
that somebody like Rifkincould go about pursuing
this secret life.
I mean, no normal, ordinaryperson could possibly do that.
With the knowledge, you know,that he was leading this kind
of life, and had the power to pull
it off must have been a sourceof great gratification for him.
NARRATOR: In the early hours of June 24, 1993,
Rifkin heads toManhattan's Lower East Side
to stroll for prostitutes.
His truck is having engine trouble,
so he borrows his mother's car.
He picks up a girl, has sex, and lets her go,
but his sick appetite has not been satisfied.
At 5:00 AM, he picks up hissecond girl of the night,
22-year-old Tiffany Bresciani.
Rifkin drives Tiffany to a parking lot,
where she agrees to have sex with $20.
The sex attack goes ahead,but this progress very
rapidly to strangulation.
NARRATOR: Tiffany becomesworking 17th victim.
It was after he murdered Tiffany,
strangled her, he was in a quandary
of what to do with the body.
He had to get home, becausehis mother had to go to work.
So he covered her with some newspapers
and he drove home to East Meadow.
NARRATOR: His mother is waiting for him,
and takes her car before hehas a chance to lose the body.
His mother wound up taking thecar from him, taking the keys,
going to her appointmentwith this body in the trunk,
and coming back, you know,two or three hours later none
the wiser.
She never knew that she had transported
a body around that morning.
NARRATOR: When his mother gets home,
Rifkin sets Tiffany's lifeless body
in a wheelbarrow in his garage.
But before he can dispose of the corpse,
he must first fix his broken down truck.
His own truck needed somevery heavy engine work.
He actually had another truck to use,
and he switched the engines out.
He actually did that over a weekend,
those days where she remainedin the garage all that time.
But it's in the summer,and within a couple of days,
the body starts smellingvery badly, and decomposing.
But because Joel's in themidst of fixing his truck,
he can't get rid of the body.
NARRATOR: The strong stench drifts
into neighbor's backyards.
So he slapdashes his car together
just enough to drive thebody, you know, 20 miles away.
NARRATOR: Three days after killing Tiffany,
Rifkin is finally ready to dispose of her body.
He loads her rotting corpseinto the repaired trunk
and hits the freeway.
But Rifkin has made a devastating mistake.
He neglected to put alicense plate on the vehicle.
And a very, very diligent officer
was about to put the end toa very long killing spree.
NARRATOR: When police catch Rifkin
after a chase through Long Island,
they discover the true horrors of his crimes.
Had he had a license plate on that vehicle,
he quite possibly would stillbe out there committing crime.
I would like to think eventually
he may have been caught, butwe have no way of knowing.
But it was just opportunity,and there was a good opportunity
that we're able to-- the troopers
were alert and aware enough to pursue
and continue with the pursuit.
It was a minor traffic offense to our troopers,
but to him, it was the end of his life.
NARRATOR: Rifkin is caught red handed.
Within hours, he confessesto all of his 17 murders.
After the interview was terminated,
we draft a search warrant.
It was specifically whatwe're going to go look for,
and what to do if-- what we find.
We had no way of knowing if anything he said
was going to be legitimate.
NARRATOR: The police quickly descend
on his house in East Meadow that he shares
with his mother and sister.
When we first arrived at thescene with the forensic crew,
it seemed very daunting,because it was such a pile,
upon pile, upon pile of mess.
His physical space, hiscar, his crimes, his room
were just as fragmented and just as chaotic
as his internal psychological state.
NARRATOR: It takes police twowhole days to search the house.
My team going in there and then taking
things very methodically, andgoing through each thing layer
by layer, so that we actually found
every piece that he described.
NARRATOR: Officers gather over 1,000 items
linked to his murder spree.
Some of the items he keptwere driver's licenses,
identification, jewelry, clothing,
different things from each victim,
which he liked to keep to remember them.
NARRATOR: In the garage,police find the bloodstained
wheelbarrow and the tools that he had
used to dismember his victim's.
Police now have proof that theyhad in their custody New York's
most prolific serial killer.
Joel Rifkin's relentless rampage makes
headline news around the world.
His trial is a media frenzy.
Joel was kind of like a star attraction
as far as tabloid journalism goes
for quite, quite some time.
NARRATOR: At the trial for Tiffany's murder,
Rifkin pleads not guilty.
Kirwin testifies for the defense,
diagnosing Rifkin as clinically insane.
He did something quite frankly that
was very crazy, and very inexplicable,
and we couldn't put our handle around it.
And as a psychologist,the only thing I could say
is that was typical schizophrenic type
of thought disorder.
He had lost the ability to trust
the evidence of his senses and was suffering
from paranoid schizophrenia.
NARRATOR: But Kirwinbelieves that the defense's
case was doomed from the start.
The media was showing JoelRifkin slumped over the table,
daydreaming, clearly not intune with what was going on.
And, of course, the headlines were saying, you know,
serial killer, has no remorse.
We knew that there was noway that any jury was going
to find Joel Rifkin insane.
NARRATOR: Theprosecution argues Rifkin
is a sane sexual predator who took satisfaction
from killing his victims.
I never got the impressionthat he was mentally ill,
but I'm certainly not a clinician.
But that was not my impression.
And I think just through thisvery difficult troubled past
that he led, he developedthis predatory behavior.
NARRATOR: Alongside the coldcase for Tiffany's murder,
Rifkin also faces trial foreight more of his killings.
But despite confessing todiscarding his first victim's
head on a New Jersey golf course,
her case does not go to trial.
And this is because police areunable to identify the victim.
Without a full name, it is impossible to charge
Rifkin for her murder.
Detective Bruce Carnall leads the investigation
into the girl's murder.
At that time I, kind of off the record,
spoke to Mr. Joel Rifkin.
The information he provided was something
only the murderer would know.
We are confident we had the killer.
NARRATOR: Rifkin tellsCarnall that the prostitute
was called Susie.
It's the lead they've been looking for.
But despite reconstructionsand drawings
made from the severed head, they were
unable to identify the victim.
I felt like I had failed a little bit.
I knew there was someone out there
who was missing their daughter, and someone
must care about her.
And it was a personal crusade, so to speak,
to try to identify her.
NARRATOR: But in 2006,Carnall retires from the force
and the case remains on some.
Hopeful detectives MichaelSherman and Bill Springer
reopen the case in 2013.
This case has been a mystery.
Thousands of hours, thousands ofleads, all of them led nowhere.
Myself and Lieutenant Springer felt
that there were some some other things
that maybe we could look into.
NARRATOR: Springer and Shermantore back through New York
arrest records looking for prostitutes
going by the name of Susie.
One name stands out, Susan Spencer.
Despite the record claiming she was last
seen five years after the head was discovered,
detectives follow the lead.
We looked into arrest photographs.
And that's where the casesort of took a different turn.
They instantly recognizedthe person in the photograph.
Over the years, there'sbeen several renditions done.
When you compare those renditions
to the actual photographof Susan Spencer from 1986,
it was pretty crystal clear we had her.
The head had a distinct scar, and it
ran through the right eyebrow.
And the picture from 1986 had that scar.
That was one of those chilling moments
where you knew you had it.
NARRATOR: They discover thatSusan Spencer was an alias
of Heidi Balch, a young woman who in the 1980s
fell on hard times.
Three weeks later, police confirmed
that the head is Heidi's through DNA
samples taken from her parents.
We all looked at each other and we were like,
I think we did it, I think we solved it.
NARRATOR: Finally after 24 years,
the mystery of the severed headon the golf course is solved.
Such a relief.
It went on for such a long time.
It was a closure for me, and I guess it
was a closure for her family.
And now she has a resting place too.
NARRATOR: Although the police now
know the identity of Rifkin's first victim,
they have decided not topursue the additional charges
against him, because they knowRifkin will already see out
the rest of his days in prison.
JUDGE: As to count one,murder in the second degree,
what is your verdict?
JURY: Guilty.
NARRATOR: In 1994, the jury find him
sane and convict him of themurder of Tiffany Bresciani.
Rifkin is successfullyconvicted of nine murders.
He is now serving a 200 yearlong sentence, guaranteed
to spend the rest of his life in New
York's correctional facilities.
He is on a program of anti-depressants
and anti-psychotic medication.
He said that he was no longerhearing these kinds of voices,
because he was properly medicated,
and that he now believesthat if he had been properly
medicated at that time, that these killings
would never have occurred.
And in a way, that was avindication for my diagnosis,
but it did not make me happy.
It made me really tragically sad that
where was the help for someone like Joel
Rifkin before 17 young womenwere put in their graves.
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