the rest of his life with. ♪ ♪ ♪ you are about to enter the criminal mindscape of joel rifkin. >> when you were strangling them, were you looking at them? >> some i was, some of them no, some of them i was looking out the window, some i was looking out into space. >> he brutally strangled women and dumped body parts along the metropolitan area.

>> as time progressed he was killing more women with greater frequency and still getting away with it. >> a reclusive loner, riffkin's trail goes unnoticed for four long years. >> what was about her that had to die? >> there were nights when i would be with two other girls and then the third girl and she would be the one i would kill. >> killing was pretty much the only thing in his life that he ever did well. >> now a veteran fbi profiler enters new york state's largest maximum security prison and steps into the criminal mindscape. ♪ ♪ ♪ every interview we do with an offender like joel gives us insight into how they think. >> former fbi special agent mark

saferic spent two years in the behavioral analysis unit. >> i am interested in the why question. why are you engaged in these different aspects? what are you feeling? what's the drive? >> by confessing to the murders of 17 prostitutes joel riffkin became the most prolific serial killer in new york state history. >> we want to delve a little bit deeper into his mind and his thinking and his perceptions. ♪ ♪ riffkin is serving 203 years in the clinton correctional facility in upstate new york. >> when he walked into the interview room i got a general sense that he felt very tense. he was looking around and he felt a little uncomfortable, and a little anxious. >> i appreciate you agreeing to talk with me today. >> thanks.

>> so, i know a lot about you. you probably don't know about me. i spent 23 years with the bureau and spent the last 12 years in the behavioral analysis unit which is what most people know as the profiling unit. >> right. thanks to tv. >> yeah. thanks to tv, right. >> want to put him at ease. i want to develop a rapport with him so in essence he tries to answer or not answer the question so he can leave the interview at any time. >> rifkin's rampage began and ended at the home he shared with his mother and sister in east meadow, long island. >> your mother is still alive, right? >> yes. >> does she ever visit you? >> yeah. they come up once a year. my mom and sister. i spoke to my mom last night. >> did you? good. good. >> does she know you're doing this interview? >> yeah. she's not happy about it, but -- >> why?

>> she thinks it just stirs the pot. brings all of the old stuff back up. >> 34-year-old joel rifkin is a self-confessed serial kill or long island. he may have murder as many as 17 prostitutes. rifkin's crimes come to light in june 1993 when he is apprehended by new york state troopers patrolling long island's southern state parkway. >> it's approximately 3:00 in the morning. we came across a pickup truck traveling eastbound that had no license plates on the vehicle. rifkin is on his way to republic airport on long island to dump the body of his 17th victim, tiffany bresciani. >> tiffany was a runaway from metair metairie, louisiana, and there are girls that get caught up in the underbelly of it and she was one of those. she ended up surviving by being

a prostitute. >> he picked her up in the east village and they drove down to what used to be the new york post parking lot, and he had trouble performing with her which agitated him. obviously, he began strangling her. rifkin drives back to long island with tiffany's corpse and puts her in the family garage. >> it was so unusual for his sister or his mother to go anywhere near that garage because the garage was very much like his room. it was all filled with his junk. >> three hot summer days pass before he gets around to disposing of the body. >> so bresciani and she's decomposing and you've got her in the back of your truck. where are you going? >> i had intended to go out east and accidentally ended up exiting towards the city and drove past a trooper car and then the christmas tree lit up.

>> and he just opted to take flight and hope for the best. >> i can't even imagine knowing his personality that there probably wasn't much more of a thought process than that. it was sheer panic. >> he reached speeds up to 90 miles an hour. at one point he put the truck up on two wheels so the driver's side of the vehicle was actually lifted off the ground, and i thought he was going to roll it over and was going to be, you know, over right there. >> eventually i crashed into a utility pole which happened to be rotten on the bottom and it spiralled over the truck. ♪ ♪ >> we came running up to the vehicle and he just put his hands up like this. >> and then basically it was, like, okay. you're going. what am i going to do now? >> no, i got out of the car and basically knelt down and got handcuffed.

>> he said his name was joel rifkin and we were trying to get the vehicle information and that's when we noticed a strong odor coming from the vehicle. >> i had my window down, and i'd say within a half a mile of the scene i could smell the odor of a dead body. ♪ >> troopers discover bresciani's decomposed corpse on the back of rifkin's truck and he was arrested and taken to police barracks in farmingdale. the team of investigators are struck by rifkin's calm demeanor. it came to a point when we asked have you done this before? was it 80, working down the line until he said 17. and it put us back in our seats, 17. >> i'll write it down for you, it might be easier for me to write it down if you give me paper and some maps. >> for the next few hours rifkin details all 17 homicides for

investigators. >> it was almost unbelievable. very fact all, off the top of his head with no hesitation and he made his notes and sat there like he was studying or writing a memoir. >> police obtained a search warrant for rifkin's mother's house. they searched his bedroom and discover scores of items that he collected from his victims. >> when he was alone and he felt the need to relive these experiences he would take these items and they would remind him of the crime and he would relive that sexual pleasure. >> driver's licenses, jewelry, earrings, aids medication. there was just a trove of evidence which directly linked him for so many murders and a lot of these murders the police were not even aware of. >> when you were strangling them, what were you doing when you were strangling them? were you looking at them? >> some i was, some i wasn't, some of them i was holding down

and some of them i was looking out of the window and some of the staring off into space. >> joel is a psychopath which i think allows him to be successful at being a serial killer. that is he doesn't have empathy for his victims and doesn't feel any remorse so it allows him to take these women, to kill them and simply really go on about his life without having any change in his behavior. >> when you looked in their faces, what did you see? a deer trapped in headlight look. just that stare. >> did you like that look? >> not necessarily because i wouldn't look more often. >> it is a personality disorder. it is not a mental health disease. psychopaths understand the difference between right and wrong. they simply choose to do wrong.

>> how did you feel, you know, when you were doing it? i really didn't remember it since that time or have any thoughts that i could recall of that time. ? he sees his victims just simply as objects. they're objects to satisfy needs that he had and when he's done with them he simply discards them like trash. >> coming up, we know what you were doing, but i'm asking you why. why did you go back? how did it make you feel to be with the prostitutes? >> just a lot less tense. a lot less lonely. what about control? well rested and ready to enjoy the morning ahead aleve pm. the first to combine a sleep aid... plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. for pain relief that can last until the am. so you... you... and you, can be a morning person again. aleve pm for a better am.

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murder, joel rifkin led a very ordinary life. >> i think people want to see all serial killers as sort of the charlie mansons or the richard ramirez's, you know, those guys that really look like

they're on the fringe, but oftentimes they're not. they're guys who look very much like you and i. ♪ >> in 1959 joel is adopted by an upper middle class long island couple. >> from a very young age joel tried to measure up to his father in some ways, but just, you know, perpetually fell short and that was a great source of disappointment for him. >> young joel also doesn't fit in with other children. afflicted by severe dyslexia and a lack of athletic skill and coordination, he becomes the constant target of bullies. >> i just happened to bring out the bully in people. >> and because you think that they saw you as a target, an easy target? >> yeah. yeah. >> how did you cope with this as you describe as sort of incessant taunting? >> i just absorbed it and one day at a time type of thing. i developed certain avoidance

habits. i would got some place just in time or slightly late buzz if you hung around in front of the school that's when you had your problems. i used to stay late after school and everybody was home, a better time to walk home. >> did you find yourself withdrawing into yourself? >> i did a lot of things by myself. >> you would spend hours upon hours in his room. he would collect fossils and rocks and he would categorize them. >> in his solitude joel conjures a world of fantasy that soon turns sinister. >> at a relatively young age, at probably 11 or 12, he started to develop intense sexual fantasies of women being dominated, women being abused. >> joel also described what he called gladiatorial fantasies

where women were fighting over him and he was the prize. >> when do you think you actually consciously recognized that you enjoyed having these violent fantasies or thoughts? you describe this gladiator scenario of girl fights girl to the death. >> yeah, it went to that point at times. >> am i mischaracterizing that? >> no, it was times that it went to death, and at times it went to submission. >> does it involve sex? >> at a teen, you know about sex, but it's one of those, yeah, it exists so what is it? so it was hard to plug that in. >> when joel hit adolescence, i think things probably got even worse because he developed an interest in girls who obviously had no interest in him. >> after high school, joel plans to study journalism, but he is ashamed to go away to college a virgin. he drives into new york city to pick up a proft dued. >> that's a very unusual event,

to go out and strike out on your own to go see a prostitute when you're 17, 18 years old rather than having had a sexual encounter with a girl that you know, but joel didn't see it that way. >> do you remember your first woman you were ever with? >> yeah. >> you do. >> what do you remember about that? >> they're not shy about their occupation in the city. >> right. >> it's right up front. she approached me. are you looking for a date? yeah, kind of. what's the deal? she said, she named the prices and that was it. ♪ >> rifkin visits more prostitutes to fill the emptiness of his life. he quickly becomes addicted to the experience. >> even after he had sex with somebody, he would still troll around the five boroughs. he liked looking at them. he didn't just like looking at

being with them, he look liked looking at them. >> he drops out of college and moves back in with his parent and barely supporting himself with odd jobs and all of his time and money go to feed his addiction. >> how did it make you feel to go? because ultimately you kept doing this. >> right. you would go on and on and on. >> it went from an be onning carol, tension reliever, just curiosity to -- yeah, every paycheck. >> right. >> there was a time where, if i cashed my check on a thursday i had to get a full tank of gas that day, get whatever errands i had to do done before friday because by monday it would be -- you got five bucks so i can get a tank of gas and get home. >> and that's the what -- we know what you were doing, but i'm asking you why. why did you go back? how did it make you feel to be with the prostitutes? >> just a lot less tense. a lot less lonely. >> less tense and lonely.

what about control? what about controlling the event? >> no. they were more in control than i was. >> he never saw himself as being in control even though he had the money, he was making the choices and he could say yes or no, and i wanted to see if he recognized that control for him was not only a part of his fantasies, but part of the relationships that he was, you know, having with these different prostitutes. ♪ >> rifkin's fantasies soon turned more violent. he can't stop thinking about killing one of the women he patronizes. >> it was the same fantasy, sometimes expanded and then there was the killing fantasy that would come in and out. >> okay. what was that fantasy? >> they were strangulation fantasies, it was -- without being, like, and i would run

through scenarios and then dismiss it. i don't know. with strangulation there seemed to be an intimacy toward it. there's contact. >> yeah. of course, there is. >> one night in march 1989 rifkin's murderous dreams finally twist into reality. >> he had been with hundreds of prostitutes leading up to that night. he pretty much fantasized about killing every single one of them when he was with them. he never thought he would do it. he never thought he would act on it. >> he drives to the area where street prostitutes work on manhattan's lower east side and picks up a young, drug-addicted woman named susie. >> his mother is away on a business trip. drives her out to long island to the home that he grew up in, where he played with his sister and where he still lives with

his mother. he plans on just having sex although this fantasy of killing somebody is in his head like it always is. ♪ >> we were going back to the stroll, she wanted a cup again so i took her to the drug spot. i still wanted to do something with her, and so we went to the house and she got high again. he had sex with susie and she wants to sleep. she wants more drugs. she wants more money, you know, she's not cooperating. ♪ >> you've been with her for quite a while. you describe 10 to 11 hours and she essentially has really been much more interested in getting drugs than -- >> yeah. getting drugs and sleeping. >> getting drugs and sleeping. >> yeah. >> any spots around here where we can get something? >> drugs? >> yeah. >> no.

we've got to go back to the city for that. i don't know any place out here. >> we get ready to leave, and that's when i hit her. >> rifkin picks up a souvenir artillery shell and hits susie in the head again and again. >> and i'm wondering, is this sort of the straw that broke the camel's back because all night long he's been getting her drugs and you know, catering to her and she hasn't really been catering to him. is this, like, i'm exasperated at this point. i'm tired of dealing with her. ♪ >> coming up. >> i mean, i'm watching. you're seeing this -- >> right. this event happening -- you're reliving this and trying to figure out. >> yeah. i can play back the videotape. >> of course, you can. [ piercing sound ]

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we just need to make sure she has what she needs. welcome to windows 10. the future starts now for all of us. life, consumed by violent, sexual fantasies, joel rifkin finally steps into the abyss. at age 30 he brings a young prostitute back to his family home and brutally murders her. >> the first homicide for him is

really important. there's a reason that he consciously decided this particular prostitute has to die and not the one that i was with the day before. >> it's kind of a rageful event to grab an artillery shell and hit somebody on the head. >> yeah. i don't think there was any decisive trigger point. it just -- >> that's what i'm wondering. is it a culmination of the whole night of the constant, get me drugs, you know? in other words, i don't know, are your needs being met through this whole night or are you sort of the gopher? >> well, i was the gopher -- to use that word, other nights. >> after bludgeoning susie with a metal shell, rifkin finally acts out his strangulation fantasy. >> one arm was around their head. the other arm was underneath the arm, so chin, neck area.

>> you were smothering her with your forearm. >> after putting up a fierce battle for her life, susie finally expires. joel panics. >> he's convinced that the cops are going to come charging through the door. he's checking the windows and he's checking the blinds and eventually calms himself down and goes to sleep for a few hours. >> how did you feel after you were done killing her? what was that feeling like? >> when i woke up i was, like, did it or did it not happen? i remember going down to the basement and realizing okay, we did do something and i remember poking her to see if she would wake up. >> did you sleep well? >> yeah. >> did you normally sleep well? >> yeah. i fell out for about six hours. >> the first homicide? >> yep. >> then what happened to her? you woke up, went down.

>> and i tried to get her out of the house. >> the next morning he proceeds to dismember the body, and put different parts of the body in plastic bags. >> what did you do with her? >> her, i cut up with the idea of small packages, easy to hide and easy to make go away and easy to take out with the trash. >> what made you decide to do that? to take that route? it's messy. it takes a lot of time. >> just like i said, you know, make everything as small as possible and make it all disappear. that was the overwhelming thought i had. >> he takes the bags containing susie's remains and scatters them in both new york and new jersey. he goes to extraordinary lengths in his first homicide to make sure that this victim isn't found, but even if she had been

found it was very unlikely there was any way that she would have ever have been linked back to joel. >> almost immediately, joel returns to seeing prostitutes. he vows to himself to not kill again, but each time he relives in his mind the act of killing susie. each time he feels the urge to kill. >> once joel committed his first murder it can be described that he, in essence, hatched and this killer -- suddenly he went from being a frequenter of prostitutes to an out and out killer. >> so then there's this extended period of time. what's going on in that 18 months? are you fantasizing? are you -- did you think back on susie? >> well, yeah. that whole night would keep repeating. some nights it was terrifying. other nights it was pleasant and

exhilarating. there were moments of terror, you know, it ran its course. >> why would it be terrifying? >> oh, i was still in denial that i even did it at times. >> you're seeing this happening. >> well, i'm trying to also remember what came after as far as -- >> right. i'm watching. you're seeing this event happening and you're reliving this, right? trying to figure out. >> yeah. i can play back the videotape. >> of course, you can. almost 20 years later. >> yeah. i have no doubt you can play it back. >> yeah. >> this is part of the reliving process for him is this ability to play back these murders in his mind. he sees each one of them. he knows each one of them. not only does he see himself doing it, but it's arousing to him and it's exciting to him and he won't admit it, but he keeps that flat affect, but clearly he

has the ability to do that and he's probably done it many times. >> coming up -- >> did you like it? how did it make you feel to strangle her? >> this is a very powerful time. a time when essentially they're controlling the life of the victim. they're playing god. i work on the cheerios team. and when i found out that my daughter-in-law, joyce, can't eat gluten, we found a way to remove the grains that contain gluten, from the naturally gluten free oats that cheerios are made of. so now we can have cheerios together, anytime.

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after strangling a young prostitute to death, budding serial killer joel kif rifkin. >> the compulsion to kill again had reached a zenith, simes it's years and sometimes it's week, but for him it was 18 months. >> in 1990 joel picks up julie blackbird under the manhattan bridge. his mother is again out of town and they drive back to east meadow. >> she slept some of the time, watchedtv. >> like a relationship. >> killing time. >> like friends. >> yeah. >> if you didn't know who you were listening to and what the outcome was, you would believe that they were a couple, you know, on a date. >> before driving her back to

the city. joel agrees to go to an atm machine and withdraw extra money for julie. >> we were leaving and i hit her from behind once and then strangled her. >> why did you hit her? >> probably to stun her. >> no, but why? >> motivating? >> i'm not asking why did -- i know you hit her so that you could incapacitate her. i mean, that's clear. i'm asking you the why. what was the reason that you hit her? he just -- that just completely escapes him. >> what did she do? because you have brought other prostitutes back to your mother's house that you didn't kill? had she done anything that you can think of over that five or six hours that culminated in something where -- >> no. i just basically decided, you know, to do it. >> i'm sure there is something

in there that's related to, you know, finally i'm just not going to take any more from these people that are essentially walking all over me, and i'm going to strike out. ♪ >> then what happened? >> you hit her with the table leg. >> hit her, strangled her. >> did you like it? ♪ ♪ >> how did it make you feel to strangle her? ♪ >> i wasn't really aware of liking it. it was more of i wanted it done. i wanted it over with and that point had passed, and i was still strangling her. 1 ♪ ♪ >> strangulation takes minutes of considerable pressure on the neck to actually cause somebody to die so there is an extended

period of time in which you are essentially face-to-face with your victim and for many offenders, this is a very powerful time. it's a time when essentially they're controlling the life of the victim. they're playing god. do you recall feeling anything? did you like the control? did you like the power that you had over her? >> i wasn't aware of it at the time. >> okay. are you aware of it now? >> i think because it was mentioned and you're not the first one to mention it. >> when you ask a psychopath, how did you feel about it? they sort of rock back because they don't really know how they felt about it because they didn't feel anything. >> rifkin dismembers julie blackbird and puts her body parts in cement-filled containers. he has a different disposal plan this time. throwing julie's remains in the

waterways surrounding manhattan. >> were you ever concerned about getting stopped by the police with all these body parts in your car? i mean, was this ever a concern? >> no. >> no. >> if they had stopped you, would they have seen the body parts? >> depending on when. most of everything was in the trunk. there was what looked like a bucket of cement in the passenger side. >> months pass. when his mother is out of town, rifkin brings a number of prostitutes home to east meadow, but he doesn't harm any of them. then in july 1991 he picks up 31-year-old barbara jacobs and his darkest urges threatening to rage out of control. >> and i remember sitting in the living room for a while debating if i should just fantasize or if

i should actually strangle her. i remember debating it for a while. >> you were debating whether to fantasize about strangling her or -- >> if i would actually do it. there comes a point where -- will i get the first videotape to stop if there is a second one? if there is a third -- they all jumble together and they won't make sense anymore and i can make it stop. >> so he's sort of saying i did it so i could stop doing them, but what i see happening, he's doing it because he likes doing them and it makes him feel good and it doesn't have anything to do with stopping. >> this time he hits her with the same type that he killed julie blackbird with. he hits her hard enough to render her semiconscious and then he -- he sort of takes his time strangling her and watching her expire. ♪ ♪ >> rifkin dumps jacob's body in

the hudson river, but he's careful about the spot he chooses. >> barbara's body was discovered within a couple of hours by firefighters who were training, but for joel that wasn't even a concern anymore because he was getting emboldened by the fact that nobody was linking him to any of these homicides. >> he was getting good at this, and getting relaxed about it. >> somewhere around the third, fourth or fifth i'm beginning to -- on one level, okay, there's something going on. i've done this more than once. i keep thinking about it. so i started going into the bookstores and the libraries trying to find answers and one of the books i got at the time was the search for the green river killer.

>> what the book turned out to be was not just reporting on that case, but it became also a how-to. >> i think that joel recognized what he was and he was trying to relate to it in terms of, you know, like i'm not the only person that's doing this. >> are you saying that you kept things because you read this in the book? >> right. the book said to keep things, so i started keeping things. >> but those were clearly things that could link you to any number of the victims. >> yeah. i don't know. ♪ >> they were things that made sense. there were things that didn't make sense. >> i think he doesn't have an explanation because he used those items. he used them to fantasize about the crimes, to essentially relive those events in his mind and he didn't want to get rid of them. >> coming up, the fact that she said i want to die, do you think

she was at a low point? you don't think she wanted to die, do you? >> i just thought in terms if she didn't she would have fought more. no fighting at all and no wiggling at all. just do it. hey buddy i heard you're having a party. what? if i was having a party, i'd invite you. would you? yeah. (phone ringing) oh! i got another call. adam: i'm not having a party! hey chris what's up! you heard about adam's party man? it's going to be crazy. i knew it! (beep) find the closest party store... introducing app-connect. (google voice) here are your directions. michael: i'm gonna throw my own party. the things you love on your phone, available on 11 volkswagen models. ...to cook healthy meals... yet up to 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more... ...add one a day men's 50+. complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it helps support healthy blood pressure with vitamin d and magnesium.

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technology designed for you. so you can easily master the way you bank. after claiming the first three victims without raising suspicion, joel rifkin becomes bolder and more lethal. >> as the homicides started to compress in time he needed to have that feeling of well-being or excitation or arousal, you know. he needed that more. ♪ ♪ >> labor day weekend, 1991, rifkin picks up 22-year-old mary ellen deluca. >> she's interested in really nothing other than getting high. she has joel taking her to

different locations. he's incapable of just demanding what he wants or telling her now it's my time to be taken care of. >> after chasing drugs with her for ten hour, joel finally convinces mary ellen to accompany him to a motel room. >> no sex. she didn't want to do sex. >> no. >> when she finally agreed it was on a very limited, her terms type of thing. >> how did that make you feel? >> i went with it and then she started crying and carrying on. i just came from rehab. i can't be doing this anymore. my life is crap. i wish i was dead. my boyfriend's going to break up with me. i just grabbed her and from the front and i strangled her. and the weird thing with her is she put up the least resistance of anybody. >> why do you think that is?

>> i think she was just at a very, very low point in her life. she was maybe suicidal in what she was saying. she just had had it. >> why did you kill her? >> she was probably out of frustration. i was hearing echoes of how my month and week had just gone, you know. >> joel's listening to her and he's feeling exactly the same thing. his whole life is, you know, not going right and, like, how dare she really complain about all of this when i'm feeling this and now she said, oh, she wants to die, and i think joel was, basically, well i'm just going to oblige her. >> the fact that she said i want to die, do you think she was at a low point. you don't think she really wanted to die do you? >> if she didn't she would have fought more. at all, no wiggling at all, just do it. it was about the attitude i got back from her.

>> he dumps deluca's body in the woods 16 miles north of new york city. this time it doesn't take long for him to strike again. >> as time went on, i think what he really had was an addiction to the intoxicating excitement that he got from the perpetration of the homicides through strangulation. ♪ ♪ >> a few weeks later, joel picks up 31-year-old yun lee on the allen street stroll during daylight hours and strangles her in his car. ♪ ♪ >> the intervals between the murders was decreasing, so that the more he did, the more he enjoyed it, and i think that the more he got away with it, he saw how easy it was for him to do this, and therefore there was no reason for him to wait. >> by the winter of 1991, the pace of rifkin's killing accelerates dramatically.

over the next 16 months he claims 11 more victims. >> it was like a runaway train, you know. he just couldn't stop at this point. >> most are strangled in his car and dumped in the water surrounding new york city. >> all, but two of the women's remains are recovered by police, but they draw no connection between the homicides. >> he actually became, you know, cavalier about it. there was an instance of him driving into a gas station and having the body sitting up in the passenger seat. >> some of the bodies he put in trunks and put them in rivers. other people were in -- he actually dug little graves for them. there was one victim he left by kennedy airport underneath a mattress. >> so he was scattering this evidence all over the place, and i think he was confident he wasn't going to be caught. ♪ ♪ >> all that changed on the night of june 28, 1993.

two weeks after confessing to 17 homicides, joel rifkin pleads not guilty to the murder of tiffany bresciani. coming up -- >> you're talking about 17 young women who aren't here anymore all as a result of mr. rifkin's cravings for the sexual pleasure.

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very intentional. he knew very well that it was wrong and he took extraordinary steps to prevent himself from being caught. >> the jury needs just two and a half hours to reach a verdict. as to count one, murder in the second degree, what is your verdict? >> guilty. >> the evidence of his guilt was extraordinary strong with the dead body in the back of his car and the insanity defense was so poor and weak that i never expected a jury to give it much consideration other than, you know, a few minutes to decide that there was nothing there. >> rifkin is given the maximum sentence of 25 years to life. >> and if you haven't been caught that night on the expressway, i mean, if you had been able to dump bresciani's body we wouldn't be talking about 17, we would be talking about 23 or 28, you know.

i don't think you would have stopped, do you? >> i had planned to. >> you had a plan to after number one. >> yeah, but now i was taking physical steps. whether the plan would have -- >> what were the physical steps. >> i was about to see a realtor down south, western, tail end of virginia, a little part just under west virginia. and you can't go play at the truck stops because if you do, you don't eat for a week. >> but you would have just driven into one of the towns or the big cities in southwest virginia. my guess is you would have found a stroll. you would have needed it. that's where you were operating. you would have had to do it. you could have been living in a cabin, but you wouldn't have stayed in the cabin.

do you really think you would have? that's again, one of the lies you tell yourself. >> i think he is acknowledging that that need still exists. it is a compulsion. it's a need-driven behavior that he feels that he has to have. he felt it for 17 times. if he hadn't been caught he would have continued. he would have just continued until he was caught. >> over the next 19 months rifkin pleads guilty to the murders of 17 women. >> i want you to know that i am sorry for dilling your daughters, i will never understand the part of me that caused me to do these terrible things to your children. >> he is sentenced to a total of 203 years in prison. >> mr. rifkin, if case there is a thing of reincarnation, i want to be sure that you spend your second life in prison also. >> today, rifkin is housed in a special unit of the prison for

high-risk and high-profile inmates. he claims to feel more at home in prison than he ever did in the free world. >> it has nothing to do with celebrity because there are plenty of other high-profile people in that facility, as well, but because there are so many sexual -- sexual offenders, nobody looks at him as if he's particularly deviant. >> you've been incarcerated many years. how are you doing? what's going on day to day here? >> right now i'm in the tailorship. the day has a rhythm and you just go with it. >> do you get hassled here at all? >> no, not really. a few guys, can you sign this for me, can you draw something for me? that would be a greater stress, i think in population. there's this belief that anything serial killer related is worth something. >> did you ever see any of those women that you killed as individuals?

>> more so now yeah. >> how? >> okay, bresciani, i think, was 22. so at 38, would she still be hitting the pipe or would she have family now? i mean, what are the odds of her taking a career life, a family life, getting out of the street thing she was in. >> right. but does that matter to you? >> at times it does. yeah. >> when it comes to those people, intellectually he knows he did wrong. he knows he should feel bad, but as far as having feelings that most of us would take for granted, he's devoid of that. >> he doesn't really see them as people, as having feelings or emotions or being related to other people as mothers, sisters. he doesn't get that, and he'll never get that.

>> it's just in his nature as being a psychopath, that that will never be a piece that he understands. ♪ jeffrey dahmer brutally murdered 17 young men and boys. >> once it happened the first time it seemed like it had control of my life from there on in. >> his killing spree lasted for more than a decade and the horror didn't stop at murder. >> was there something sexual in the dismemberment of the bodies for you? >> yes. it was the sexual part to that. >> why the cannibalism? >> how can a seemingly normal midwestern boy growp