Mrs. Cuba
CPE
6 April 2015
ROUGH DRAFT
Joel Rifkin was born on January 20, 1959 and adopted shortly after his birth. He was a strange child growing up and at the age of 30 he killed his first prostitute, it was “two years after his father’s death” (Eftimiades). He would wait “until his mother was out of town on vacation, then went in search of a prostitute” (Joel Rifkin). He would bring her home, have sex “and then beat her to death” (Joel Rifkin). The big question is why did he do this? No one has a for sure answer, but there are tons of reasons why Joel would kill. I am going to focus on the way he was bullied as a child, his father committing suicide, and the movie Frenzy.
Bullying is something that happens every day and no one ever realizes it or cares. Joel Rifkin was a victim of bullying just like anyone else, “they called him The Turtle, mimicking his slouched posture and slow footsteps, seldom missing a chance to make him the butt of cruel jokes” (Joel Rifkin | Murderpedia, the Encyclopedia of Murderers). …show more content…
When he died his adopted mother, “Jeanne Rifkin, grew withdrawn and depressed—and Joel Rifkin retreated even more deeply into a dim, private world” (Eftimiades). When people get diagnosed with cancer they immediately think they are going to die in pain and suffering. “Rifkin 's father killed himself to end the pain of cancer” (Joel Rifkin | Murderpedia, the Encyclopedia of Murderers), he committed suicide by overdosing. At his father 's funeral, Rifkin delivered the eulogy and since then “things seemed to go downhill for him” (Joel Rifkin | Murderpedia, the Encyclopedia of Murderers). The same year his father died he was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer and “two years after his father 's death, Rifkin murdered his first victim, whom police have never found” (Eftimiades). What did not help was the movie