Joel Rifkin Case Analysis | Mental Health & Personality

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can analyze the mental health and personality characteristics that may be at work in the Joel Rifkin case so Joel Rifkin was a serial killer who was active from 1989 to 1993 in New York he murdered 17 people now everybody I'll be talking about in this video of course are real people so just a reminder I'm not diagnosing anybody only speculating about what could be happening a situation like this so first I'll start with the timeline of the crimes take a look at Joel Rifkin's background take a look at the arrest and trial and then the mental health and personality characteristics so starting with the timeline this case starts in March of 99 we see Joel Rifkin who is 30 years old at that time drives from his family home in Long Island New York to New York City after his mother and sister leave home on vacation while in New York City he picks up a prostitute and brings her back to his home while there she slept and used heroin and eventually Rifkin became aggravated with her and struck her in the head with a shell casing from a howitzer he then strangled her a very unusual choice of weapon for this first murder we then see he removes her fingerprints and teeth and he cuts the victims body into six parts eventually he dumps those parts throughout New Jersey and New York on March 5 1989 we see the victim's head is discovered on a golf course in New Jersey when Rifkin heard the news that the victim was discovered he became extremely afraid that he would be arrested and go to prison and he promised to himself that he would never kill again now we moved to 1991 Rifkin resumes killing from 91 to 93 we see a series of murders committed by Rifkin all the victims were thought to be prostitutes there is a debate about when some of the murders occurred because many of the victims were found long after they were killed many of the bodies were dismembered and - the victims were never found now in 1991 there were five murders two victims were struck with a table leg can also use strangulation the first victims remains were never found the other victims were dumped in the Hudson River a highway rest stop the East River and Coney Island Creek in 1992 there were eight murders rifkin mostly used strangulation for these murders the victims bodies were dumped at the JFK International Airport in the woods and in the water for example Hudson River Newtown Creek Coney Island Creek and the Harlem River in 1993 we see three murders one occurred in February the next in April and on the last one in June the first two victims were dumped in the woods and the third one was found in the back of Rifkin's Mazda pickup truck this was on the day he was arrested so now moving to his arrest Rifkin's last victim was a 22 year old woman named Tiffany bresciani he had murdered her on June 24 1993 now Rifkin was in his mother's car when he killed her he put the body and a tarp and wrapped a rope around it and put in the trunk when he arrived home his mother demanded the car keys because she wanted to go shopping so she didn't give him an opportunity to move the body she took the vehicle and drove round shopping with the dead body in the trunk upon his mother's return Rifkin moved the body to the garage in a wheelbarrow he put the body in the bed of his Mazda pickup truck right before he went out on June 28th as he was driving to a local airport around 3:00 a.m. the state police attempted to pull him over because his front license plate was missing he tried to escape he led them on a high-speed chase for about 25 minutes and eventually crashed into a utility pole the police arrested him and found the body in the bed of the truck when they asked Rifkin for the identity of the victim he indicated that it was a prostitute who he killed and he was headed to the airport to get rid of the body he asked the officers if he needed a lawyer right so I wonder kind of what he thought their answer was gonna be here I mean he had to know this was a serious offense Rifkin was interrogated for eight hours but the police did not record the sessions Rifkin claimed that he asked for a lawyer at least 20 times and the police refused the police claim that Rifkin was off from an attorney but declined now with this situation who knows what happened but because he mentioned the word lawyer when he was being arrested I think that the police should have erred on the side of caution here when somebody says lawyer that should be it although of course police often ignore that so he could be telling the truth here he could have asked for an attorney a few times and they could be lying or the police could be telling the truth but it's really hard to know in this situation it would have been much better if they recorded the sessions now Rifkin confessed to 17 murders and even drew maps for the police the police stopped by Rifkin's mother's home where Rifkin lived and talked to his mother after this she called an attorney who called the State Police and told them to stop interrogating Rifkin they did not discontinue the interrogation so here we see another kind of risky move by the police they took a lot of chances here the whole confession could have been thrown out it wasn't but again they were really playing with fire here now moving to the trial may 9 1994 after being tried for the murder of Tiffany Rossi Ani Rifkin was convicted of murder and reckless endangerment the reckless endangerment charge was because he fled from the police he received 25 years in prison for the murder and 2 to 7 years for the reckless endangerment later we see he pleads guilty to other murders altogether he would be sentenced to 203 years to life eligible for parole in 20 197 now taking a look at Rifkin's background Rifkin was born on january 20 1959 he was adopted three weeks later by Ben and Jeanie Rifkin his family moved to East Meadow Long Island when he was six years old Rifkin had a number of problems in school he was shy and he was bullied by the other students they call him the turtle because he was hunched over and he had a slow unsteady gait he had dyslexia which had a negative effect on his grades now even though he didn't perform well academically his intelligence level was thought to be quite high he received a score of 128 on an IQ test that's almost two standard deviations above the mean now Rifkin was uncoordinated prone and not good at athletic endeavors so this only contributed to more bullying and this bullying escalated when he was in high school it included more physical violence like him being struck with eggs his head being submerged in a toilet and the bullies pulling his pants down in front of girls now all this caused his academic performance to decline even more because he started actively avoiding other students he would deliberately come late to class and he would be the last to leave school so he could be left alone he was just trying to avoid people and he knew if he came in late and left late he would not have contact with many students Rifkin would spend his time alone in his bedroom and eventually he started fantasizing about sex many of these fantasies also included violence this is a familiar theme when talking about serial killers one fantasy included women fighting to the death over him like they were fighting to be with Rifkin now he took an interest in photography his parents even bought him a new camera and he joined the high school yearbook committee hoping to take pictures for the yearbook but right after he joined some of his classmates stole that camera now Rifkin decided to stay on the committee working on non photography related items the committee successfully completed the yearbook and held a party afterward to celebrate they did not invite Rifkin evidently this had a profound impact on him with Rifkin once again being rejected he went back to spending time alone in his bedroom Andy took an interest in books about serial killers he also developed a keen interest in the 1972 movie named frenzy this was an Alfred Hitchcock film about a serial killer he was particularly excited when he saw scenes where female victims were strangled after graduating high school in 1977 Rifkin attended college he was unable to make friends there and remained isolated he would drop out enroll in another college and drop out again Rifkin started dating prostitutes around the time he graduated from high school he had extreme difficulty talking to women but he did not seem to struggle too much with this activity it became like an addiction to him now Rifkind kept doing this to the point where there was a significant financial effect on him he would use any money he had for prostitutes this activity also caused him to neglect work and his classes so this moves us to February 1987 Rifkin was 28 years old we see that his father Ben who was diagnosed with cancer about six months before ended his own life August 1987 we see Rifkin was arrested for soliciting an undercover officer now he hid this arrest from his mother this moves us to March 1989 as I mentioned before this is when Rifkin committed his first murder not long after this he started a landscaping company in 1991 that failed and he had a series of part-time jobs but could never really hold on to steady employment now moving to the mental health and personality characteristics that might be a work in a case like this well Rifkin killed because he had and entertained powerful fantasies about sex he had taken 228 items from his victims he stored these items in his room items like jewelry driver's licenses medication bottles many killers have used items like this to recreate the feeling of the crime and this is what Rifkin did now we see a number of theories with Rifkin and psychosis Rifkin said that he would speak to the bodies and that whispers told him to commit the murders now at the trial we see two different stories in terms of the mental health the clinician that was hired by the defense said that Rifkin was the most pathological person she had seen in 20 years she believed that he had paranoid schizophrenia which was a diagnosis that was available back at the time this trial occurred now the mental health professional hired by the prosecution said that Rifkin was sick but not insane he knew exactly what it was doing and he did it so again as is fairly common in these types of cases we get two different stories one story that points toward like an insanity defense on the side of the defense and on another story from the prosecution that makes it look like the defendant knew they're doing the whole time along so I'll take a look at this personality here and then get into more specifics with mental health because a lot of the mental health factors are tied in with personality now I use the five factor model to conceptualize personality I remember this - the acronym ocean openness to experience conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism so it looks like Rifkin is high and openness to experience including intellectual curiosity his high IQ seems to be consistent with that we see low-to-mid conscientiousness for example he was pulled over because he didn't have a front license plate on his vehicle we see extremely low extraversion mid-range agreeableness and mid to low neuroticism now with that personality profile in mind one theory that comes up of course would be psychopathy now psychopathy has two factors primary and secondary and each factor has two facets factor one as interpersonal and affective as the two facets and factor two has life style and antisocial what's interesting about Rifkin's behavior is how it mainly aligns with characteristics of just one facet from each factor so with factor one on the affective facet we see a lack of guilt being callous having shallow effect and failing to accept responsibility these seem to align with Rifkin's behavior but looking at the interpersonal facet again a factor one we don't really seem to have a good match here he was not highly manipulative and he didn't seem to have superficial charm he was actually really socially awkward although one could argue that he did have pathological lying and some grandiosity now moving the factor to looking at the lifestyle facet we see excitement-seeking a parasitic lifestyle lacking long-term goals being irresponsible and being impulsive all these appear to align with this behavior but here again when we look at the other facet antisocial he did not seem to have early behavioral problems he was not a juvenile delinquent and he didn't have substantial criminal versatility he pretty much committed the same type of crime over and over looking at psychopathy of course brings us to looking at antisocial personality disorder an official mental disorder that aligns with psychopathy it's not a perfect match but there is some overlap there now we see that Rifkin's behavior does appear to align with these seven symptoms of antisocial personality disorder repeated unlawful behaviors consistent deceitfulness impulsivity aggressiveness or irritability a reckless disregard for safety irresponsibility and a lack of remorse one of the other criteria is having conduct disorder symptoms before the age of 15 his behavior doesn't seem to align with this criterion it's unusual to have all the symptoms of antisocial person is order and the absence of those early conduct disorder symptoms so we see an unusual situation here where his behavior seems to align with a personality disorder but the pattern doesn't extend from his childhood and there's no such thing as a late onset personality disorder so this is a confusing pattern quite similar to what we see with Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber who also had extremely low extraversion what about the question of Rifkin being psychotic this was debated at the trial as I talked about he didn't seem particularly paranoid so paranoid schizophrenia doesn't seem right but he could have been psychotic without being paranoid we don't really see strong evidence of hallucinations but could there have been delusions where his fantasies delusional or were they just unusual I don't really see strong evidence for delusions either but there is another explanation for his behavior in addition to the contribution made from the psychopathy so this brings me to narcissism there are some narcissistic characteristics with Rifkin's behavior a lack of empathy a sense of entitlement being self-centered but overall there's not a lot in the way of narcissism especially considering how many characteristics of psychopathy seem to align with his behavior Rifkin seems less narcissistic than most serial killers now Rifkin did have fantasies and they are narcissistic fantasies but they're not the kind of fantasies we see in the death of narcissistic personality disorder like wanting unlimited wealth and success they're more like fantasies of him having his way fantasies of control and domination so what happened here with this narcissism well Rifkin endured both verbal and physical bullying during all the time he was in elementary school and high school and I think this had a significant impact on him he couldn't meet his need to be liked to fit in or to find acceptance among his peers in really any way and due to this the narcissism forms and becomes protective the ego finds a way to satisfy those needs this whole fantasy world is really constructed as that narcissism develops now this alone probably would not have been problematic to the level where somebody becomes a murderer but we see little here in the way of supervision Rifkin is able to delve into true crime and nobody really stops him from kind of obsessing on these different topics like again he's spending a lot of time alone in his room that was very unhealthy but with no supervision that fantasy just grows he's able to get closer and closer to the fantasy so he really moves toward that line between fantasy and reality so he has the fantasies and he starts thinking seriously about how he could make them come true his father's death allowed Rifkin to explore his fantasies with really almost no supervision so at that point we see a lot of supervisory power and influence is just removed from his life the fantasy just comes in and seems to really dominate so with Rifkin we really see how his avoidance behavior kind of spirals downward and feeds this narcissistic fantasy people reject him he avoids them in response this avoidance grows stronger and he starts approaching the fantasies right so people are gonna move in one direction or another they don't stay stagnant typically so in the absence of pro-social contacts and a network of friends he moves toward and by social thinking so those are the mental health and personality factors that may be at work in the Rifkin case I have some other thoughts about this serial killer we see a while back there was a Seinfeld episode where Elaine was dating a guy named Joel Rifkin so it was kind of funny the way the episode portrayed it his name was called out I think it like a baseball game or something and it was really embarrassing and Elaine suggested to him you might want to consider changing his name I think everyone who shares a name with a serial killer really does have a tough decision to make right it's not fair fortunately this isn't a widespread problem and some of these serial killers have unusual names but some don't some have fairly common names that I could picture a lot of other people having so this would be a rare problem that not many people would have and of course it's very minor compared to the victims of murder but it's just something that the Seinfeld episode featured I thought was interesting it's interesting they mentioned specifically Joel Rifkin we also see that Joel Rifkin admired the Green River Killer later he would be identified as Gary Ridgway I find it curious because these two were actually pretty similar they both targeted the same population although Gary Ridgway had higher conscientiousness and higher extraversion the last part here is we see that Joel Rifkin was caught because of a missing license plate his arrest really underscores the importance of enforcing all levels of crimes with some degree of vigor all those detectives following all the leads they had in this case were unable to make progress Joel Rifkin was actually pretty effective at hiding the evidence but enforcing traffic laws actually paid off right so an unexpected benefit of having again enforcement across a wide range of criminal activities serial killers are typically impulsive and tend to make a lot of mistakes and commit low-level crimes as well so if they can be arrested for a low-level crime that could lead to the police discovering the more serious crimes so all levels of law enforcement are important now I know whenever I talk about topics like serial killers there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 155,027

Keywords: Joel Rifkin, narcissism, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, factor 1 psychopathy, factor 2 psychopathy, sociopathy, hypersensitivity to criticism, mental health, counseling

Id: Fhd01XCp8t4

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Wed May 06 2020