John Francis Roche, also known as Joel Rifkin, was born to young college students. His biological father was a veteran of the Army. When he was three weeks old, on February 14, 1959, he was adopted by a couple from Long Island. This couple was upper-middle class, meaning they had a comfortable amount of money.

In school, Joel had a hard time because of learning disabilities. He wasn't popular with other students and didn't make many friends. Despite these challenges, he graduated from East Meadow High School in 1977. After high school, he tried attending a few colleges, including Nassau Community College and two State University of New York campuses. However, he never finished his degree and left college without graduating.

After leaving college, Joel started working for himself as a landscaper, taking care of gardens and lawns. His family faced a tragedy on February 20, 1987, when his father, Bernard, who had been suffering from prostate cancer for several months, committed suicide by overdosing on medication.

Later that year, on August 22, 1987, Joel got into trouble with the law. He was arrested in Hempstead, New York, during a police sting operation. He offered money for sex to an undercover female police officer, which led to his arrest.

On February 20, 1989, Joel Rifkin committed his first murder. He killed a woman named Heidi Balch at his home in East Meadow. After killing her, Rifkin dismembered her body. He removed her teeth and fingertips to make identification difficult. He placed her head in a paint can and left it in the woods on a golf course in Hopewell, New Jersey. He disposed of her legs farther north and dumped her torso and arms into the East River in New York City. On March 5, 1989, Balch's severed head was found on the seventh hole of the golf course. Her legs were discovered on April 8, 1989, in Pequonnock Creek near Jefferson Township, New Jersey. It wasn't until 2013 that her remains were finally identified.

It is believed that Rifkin killed 16 more women over the next four years. After his arrest in 1993, he was linked to Balch's murder. Investigators confirmed in 2013 that Balch was indeed his first victim. On June 24, 1993, Rifkin picked up a prostitute named Tiffany Bresciani in Manhattan. She was with her boyfriend and pimp, Dave Rubinstein, a punk rock musician. Bresciani told Rubinstein she would be back in 20 minutes. When she didn't return, Rubinstein called the police and gave them a description of Rifkin's 1984 Mazda pickup truck. Less than two weeks after Bresciani's death, Rubinstein committed suicide by overdose.

On June 28, 1993, at 3:15 am, state troopers on Long Island's Southern State Parkway noticed Rifkin's truck didn't have a license plate. When they tried to pull him over, Rifkin led them on a 20-25 minute chase. He eventually lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a light pole. The police identified the driver as Joel Rifkin. Inside the truck, they found Tiffany Bresciani's body wrapped in a tarpaulin. In 1994, Rifkin was found guilty of nine counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 203 years to life in prison.

In 1996, prison officials decided that Rifkin was too notorious to be placed in the general prison population. He was kept in his cell for 23 hours a day at the Attica Correctional Facility. After more than four years in solitary confinement, he was moved to Clinton Correctional Facility. Rifkin sued, claiming that his solitary confinement was unconstitutional, but in 2000, a state appellate court ruled against him. At Clinton, he was housed with over 200 other inmates who were also kept out of the general population.

There were speculations that Rifkin might be responsible for the Gilgo Beach serial killings, but he denied any involvement. The timeline did not match his active period. In 2023, an architect named Rex Heuermann was arrested and charged with the murder of several women found on Gilgo Beach.