Joel Rifkin
Joel David Rifkin (born January 20, 1959) is an American serial killer who was sentenced to 203 years in prison for the murders of nine women between 1989 and 1993, though he is believed to have killed up to 17 victims in all. Early life. Rifkin's birth parents were both young college students, his biological father an army veteran. On February 14, 1959, when he was three weeks old, Rifkin was adopted by an upper-middle class couple living on Long Island. Rifkin performed poorly in school due to learning disabilities and was unpopular with classmates due  to his poor social skills. He graduated from East Meadow High School in 1977, then attended classes at Nassau Community College, the State University of New York at Brockport, and the State University of New York at Farmingdale, New York; he left before earning a degree. After leaving college, Rifkin became self-employed as a landscaper. On February 20, 1987, his father Bernard died by suicide, overdosing after suffering from prostate cancer for several months. On August 22, 1987, Rifkin was arrested during a sex worker sting in Hempstead, New York, after offering an undercover female police officer money for  sex. Murders. Rifkin committed his first murder on February 20, 1989, killing Heidi Balch in her home in East Meadow. He then dismembered her body, removing her teeth and fingertips, putting her head in a paint can which he left in the woods on a golf course in Hopewell, New Jersey, disposing of her legs farther north, and then dumping her remaining torso and arms into the East River around New York City. On March 5, 1989, Balch's severed head was discovered on the seventh hole of the golf course. On April 8, 1989, Balch's legs were found  in Pequonnock Creek near Jefferson Township, New Jersey. Balch's remains were not identified until 2013. Over the next four years, it is assumed Rifkin killed 16 more women. After his arrest in 1993, he was implicated in Balch's murder. In 2013, investigators determined that Balch and the woman he described as his first victim were the same person. On June 24, 1993, Rifkin picked up Tiffany Bresciani, a prostitute who was working on Allen Street in Manhattan. Tiffany was with her boyfriend, punk rock musician Dave Rubinstein, at the time and told Rubinstein that she would return in  20 minutes. After she failed to return, Rubinstein called the police with a description of the 1984 Mazda pickup truck driven by Rifkin. Arrest and trial. On June 28, 1993, state troopers patrolling Long Island's Southern State Parkway noticed the pickup truck without a license plate, proceeding to pull him over finding the body under a tarpaulin. He was found guilty of nine counts of second-degree murder in 1994, and sentenced to 203 years up to life in prison. Prison life. Prison officials decided in 1996 that Rifkin was so notorious that his presence in the general prison  population could be disruptive. He was confined to his cell at the Attica Correctional Facility for 23 hours per day. He spent more than four years in solitary confinement, then was transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Clinton County, New York. Rifkin sued, arguing that his solitary imprisonment was unconstitutional. In 2000, a state appellate court determined that prison officials had not violated his constitutional rights by housing him in isolation. Corrections officials say that Rifkin is imprisoned with more than 200 other inmates at Clinton who are not allowed into the general prison population.