The accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann and prolific convicted serial killer Joel Rifkin have eerie similarities, experts have said.
Among the likenesses between the two New York residents are the type of victims they sought, the methods by which they killed and discarded bodies, and lookalike high school photos in which they both donned glasses.
Heuermann, 61, was arrested in July 2023 and is charged with the murder of seven women. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and a trial is pending.
Rifkin, however, has been behind bars for the last 32 years, serving a 203-year sentence for the murder of nine women, though it is believed that he may have killed up to 17 people.
Both men were raised in suburban Long Island with Heuermann living in Massapequa Park, just nine miles from Rifkin’s East Meadow home.
Rifkin, 66, is five years older than Heuermann and graduated East Meadow High School, while Heuermann graduated Berner High School.
Their high school yearbook photos showed an uncanny resemblance.
‘Look at them, they look like twins,’ Robert Mladinich, author of the book ‘From the Mouth of the Monster: the Joel Rifkin Story,’ told the Daily Mail.
A map showing how both Heuermann and Rifkin lived just nine miles from each other
Mladinich met Rifkin when they both were journalism students at the University of Brockport and was shocked when he was arrested.
He would later learn that Rifkin was adopted, had a learning disability throughout his childhood, and started paying to sleep with sex workers while in high school.
‘Joel Rifkin and Rex Heuermann both grew up in two-parent homes. Both had difficult relationships with their fathers, were socially awkward as children and were incessantly bullied by their peers,’ Mladinich said.
‘As adults, both frequented sex workers, which became a pre-occupation for them. Both [allegedly] committed murders of sex workers in the homes they shared with family members, where on some occasions they dismembered the bodies,’ he said.
Rex Heuermann’s graduation photo from Berner High School in Massapequa
Joel Rifkin’s graduation photo from East Meadow High School
Both men seemingly hunted for the same types of victim – petite and slender – who worked as escorts or sex workers.
Some were single moms trying to survive, others were aspiring actresses waiting for their big break or drug addicts looking for their next hit.
Unlike Rifkin who would stalk the dark streets in his car in pursuit of a victim, Heuermann allegedly used Craigslist and burner phones as a way to set up pre-arranged dates as digital technology advanced.
Both men allegedly raped, murdered and mutilated their victims. They then dumped their bodies, or body parts, across Long Island and the East End, and parts of New York City.
‘Many of Rifkin’s victims were dumped in waterways in New York City and beyond, including New Jersey and upstate New York,’ Mladinich said.
‘Several were dismembered and placed in multiple locations. Some were placed in 50 gallon drums.’
Forensic criminal psychologist Lauran Brand categorized both Rifkin and alleged murderer Heuermann under the same subtype of ‘Hedonistic’ serial killers.
‘The driving force that motivates Hedonistic serial killers is thrill and lust,’ she told DailyMail.com.
‘They also share the same victimology preference type of female sex workers, common among serial killers for their transient lifestyle.’
She said another commonality in both cases is that the killers dismembered some of their victims which she called ‘a unique commonality’.
‘Statistics of serial killers who dismembered their victims is roughly only 15-10 percent,’ she said.
Notable serial killers who also did this are Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer and Edmund Kemper.
Rex Heuermann’s childhood home in Massapequa Park, Long Island
Rifkin brought some of the victims back to his East Meadow home (pictured) that he shared with his family
Rifkin was being interviewed by the author Robert Mladinich
Accused Long Island serial killer Rex A. Heuermann appears with his attorney Michael Brown, during a hearing in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, New York, U.S., April 15, 2025
Rifkin’s five-year reign of terror began in 1989 and ended with his June 28, 1993, arrest and then conviction.
It wasn’t until years later that some of Rifkin’s victims were identified through advances in DNA testing.
Rifkin is serving out his multiple life sentences at the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York.
When Rifkin’s murderous escapades ended in 1993, Heuermann’s had allegedly just begun and then spanned more than 30 years until his arrest on July 13, 2023, near his midtown, Manhattan office.
DNA recovered from a discarded pizza crust was found in a trash bin near Heuermann’s office that linked him to Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and later Maureen Brainard-Barnes, known as ‘The Gilgo Four.’
Further evidence allegedly connects him to the murders of Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.
Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty in the savage crimes, is currently awaiting trial and is incarcerated at a prison in Riverhead, Long Island.
On the outside, Rifkin appeared to be living a normal life with his mother and his sister at their East Meadow home while Heuermann, only miles away, was sharing his Massapequa home with his wife and two children.
Melissa Barthelemy (top left), Amber Costello (top right), Megan Waterman (bottom left), and Maureen Brainard-Barnes (bottom right) became known as the ‘Gilgo Four’
Both young girls were allegedly Heuermann’s victims
But, both deviants would allegedly bring their victims back to their homes when their families were out-of-town. Prosecutors claimed that some of Heuermann’s victim’s were tortured in the home.
Mladinich notes that Rifkin grew more careless in the later years and it was his recklessness that ultimately got him caught, while he believes Heuermann appeared to be more organized and methodical.
Prosecutors said Heuermann had kept a ‘planning document’ that describes how to select, kill and dispose of his victims. Some of the steps he outlined included the ‘packaging’ of bodies for transport, steps to avoid apprehension and the removal of trace DNA evidence.
Both men had tenuous relationships with their fathers – who both died before they saw what became of their sons.
Heuermann’s father, Theodore, was an aerospace engineer who died when Rex was only 11-years-old.
Rikfin’s father, Bernard, was a successful mechanical engineer, former stand out athlete with a wide circle of friends. But, when he was stricken with cancer his life changed and he died by suicide when Rifkin was 28.
‘Joel believed that he failed so many times in his father’s eyes,’ he said.
‘In his mind he felt that he caused his father to commit suicide and then he spiraled and his activity with hookers accelerated and became his outlet for everything,’ Mladinich added.
Police on site where one of Rifkin’s victims was located in the brush near Kennedy Airport
Heidi Balch (left) was Rifkin’s first victim. Her head was found on a golf course in 1989. Jenny Soto (right), 23, was Rifkin’s 14th known victim. Her body was discovered in 1992
Mladinich said that Rifkin and his mother bonded over their hobbies of photography and horticulture and said ‘it is hard to know where Rifkin got his hatred of women’.
‘Joel admits in the book that he preyed on the ones who looked the most emaciated, drug addled and physically weak and is looks like Rex did the same,’ Mladinich said.
He recalled that Rifkin told him that ‘there was no rhyme or reason when people would die’.
‘He talked about this whole ritual of going to doing this four-borough stroll – leaving Long Island to go to Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan,’ he said.
He also revealed that Rifkin’s sick fantasies of murder began when he was as young as 15-years-old. The 1972 Alfred Hitchcock film ‘Frenzy,’ about a man who strangles his victims with a necktie became an inspiration.
‘He fantasized about choking every person he was with. In his words,’ Mladinich said, ‘it jazzed up the experience.’
Retired police detective and author Robert Mladinich (left) is pictured on the Oxygen documentary Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer
The boxing match was an assignment that Mladinich and Rifkin did together
He recalled the first time he met Rifkin, they were both covering a heavyweight boxing event together for a local newspaper.
Mladinich was writing the story and Rifkin was taking the photos.
‘He had shaggy hair, was kind of mopey, and he had all these cameras dangling off his shoulders,’ he said.
As he got to know him better, he described him as kind of ‘insecure, an artistic type’ but believed, he would blossom later in life to ‘become this really cool guy’.
After Mladinich graduated, he learned Rifkin had dropped out of school. ‘I figured naively maybe he went on to really exciting pastures. I kind of envisioned him working for National Geographic and other prominent publications, but obviously nothing could be further from the truth.’
Mladinich later joined the police and is now the co-author of several true-crime books.
He later opened his own private investigation firm and went back to school to become a licensed social worker after he left the police force.
Today he works with attorneys and assists in criminal cases using his clinical background in social work.
