Who is Green River Killer? Joel Rifkin's killing spree inspired by Gary Ridgway who pled guilty to 49 murders
Oxygen's new documentary on serial killer Joe Rifkin, ‘Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer’, will air Saturday, April 10. The two-hour special includes a confession tape of Rifkin, who gave a detailed account of his life and why he killed nearly 17 women between 1989 and 1993 in New York City and Long Island, New York.
When New York’s most prolific killer was inside Attica Penitentiary -- a maximum security campus of New York State prison in the town of Attica -- he agreed to talk to his former college friend and retired NYPD detective Robert Mladinich. From his childhood to the day he was arrested in June 1993, Rifkin talked about everything.
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After his arrest on June 28, 1993, his home was searched by detectives. As per the upcoming Oxygen documentary, “It was almost like digging for the treasury. There was a driver’s license of some of the victims. There was clothing, jewelry. There were also articles on Arthur Shawcross, the serial killer from the Rochester area, New York. And it had a book on Green River Killer, almost how-to guides for him.”
When Mladinich talked about another serial killer from Washington, Gary Ridgway -- dubbed Green River Killer by the media -- with Rifkin and asked him if he was copying him, he replied, “Some of the events were unconsciously copycatting. He [Ridgway] buried one, I buried one. He went from water to land, I went from water to land. He placed one by an airport, I placed one by an airport. He did things in clusters, I did things in clusters.”
The retired officer also questioned Rifkin on why he saved souvenirs after the killings, he added: “That I think came from the Green Killer book. I think I imitated what I had read.”
Who is Green River Killer?
Gary Ridgway, whose full name is Gary Leon Ridgway, preyed on the streets of Washington in search of his quarry in the 1980s and early 1990s. He once proudly told investigators, “Choking is what I did and I was pretty good at it.” The local press called Ridgway the Green River Killer as several of his victims’ remains were found near the Green River in South King County.
According to reports, most of the women who became Ridgway’s prey were sex workers or in vulnerable situations. Though he was suspected of murders for long, he was only arrested in November 2001 after advancement in DNA technology helped investigators link him to the murders of four women. Ridgway claimed that he had taken the lives of nearly 80 women, but in 2003 to avoid a death sentence, he pleaded guilty to only 49 murders and gave his consent to cooperate in finding the bodies of his victims and giving other details.
When Ridgway submitted his statement along with his guilty plea, he said he killed all his victims inside King County, Washington, but threw away two bodies near Portland, Oregon to confuse the police - a strategem Rifkin adopted when he murdered his first victim, dumping some of her body parts in one of the rivers in Manhattan while taking her head to dispose at a golf course in New Jersey.
In his confession, Ridgway claimed he preyed on prostitutes because they were “easy to pick up” and slow to be reported missing. The same goes with Rifkin too as most of his victims were sex workers with whom he used to have sex before murdering them. Besides these, one of Ridgway’s victims was identified after 37 years of her murder. Her name was Wendy Stephens, identified as the youngest victim of the Green River Killer.
Rifkin’s first victim’s identification was also completed decades later. His first prey was a prostitute named Heidi Balch, who went by the nickname “Susie”. He killed her and cut her body in numerous parts before throwing them away. Though her head was found on a New Jersey golf course in March 1989, it took around 25 years for investigators to positively identify her. She was eventually identified in 2013 when detectives learned that Balch, who was reported missing by her aunt in 2001, had also used the name “Susan Spencer” or “Susie”.
‘Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer’ is premiering on Oxygen at 7 pm ET/PT on April 10.