Joel Rifkin was raised on middle-class values and grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood. After school he worked in his local library and his high school year-book shows he was a member of the debating team, the athletics squad and the photography club. On 28 June 1993, 34-year-old Rifkin was stopped by the police for not having licence plates on the pick-up truck he was driving. A minor crime, not something that would make the headlines, or so the police thought. Until, that is, they found the decomposing body of a young woman wrapped in a tarpaulin in the back of his truck. After his arrest, Rifkin told police of his horrific habit of picking up prostitutes in Manhattan and killing them, usually by strangulation, then dumping their bodies. He claims to have killed a total of 17 women. This book tells the story of this killer. Maria Eftimiades is a journalist and the author of several books, including Lethal Lolita, My Name Is Katherine, Sins of the Mother, and Garden of Graves.
