Joel David Rifkin is an American serial killer. In 1994, he was sentenced to 203 years in prison for the murders of nine women between 1989 and 1993. He is believed to have killed up to 17 victims between 1989 and 1993 in New York City and on Long Island, New York. Although he often hired sex workers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, he lived in East Meadow, a suburban hamlet on Long Island.
Rifkin committed his first murder in 1989, killing Heidi Balch in his home in East Meadow. He then dismembered her body, removing her teeth and fingertips, putting her head in a paint can and then leaving the paint can in the woods of a golf course in southern New Jersey and her legs further north, then dumping her remaining torso and arms into the East River around New York City. Balch's remains weren't identified until 2013.
Over the next four years, it is presumed he killed 16 more women. After his final arrest in 1993, he was implicated in the murder of a woman whose severed head was discovered on a Hopewell, New Jersey, golf course on March 5, 1989. In 2013, investigators determined this victim, a sex worker named Heidi Balch, was the same woman he described as his first victim.
Christmas card with handwritten missive on the inside fold. Signed J. Handwritten letter on stationary sized paper that was included with the card is also included, as is the original typed envelope. Right corner of envelope has a tear but it doesn't take anything away from the piece.
Product Code | JRIFKIN20211E |
Condition | New |