***Please note: This ebook edition does not contain the photos found in the print edition.***
Neighbors knew him as the quiet, unemployed landscaper who tended his mother's beautiful garden. None of them ever suspected that the foul odors coming from his garage was the stench of death hanging over a blood-soaked wheelbarrow, or that the truck he used to carry fresh soil and flower bulbs in became a hearse once night fell...
By night, he reaped a bloody harvest...
Joel Rifkin cruised lower Manhattan carefully selecting his prey of mostly young prostitutes. Once they were inside his van, the gentle guy who told them he just wanted sex turned into a deranged monster who strangled them with savage force. His lust for killing satisfied, he then stuffed his victims' broken bodies in barrels, trunks and suitcases, dumping them like trash in remote areas across three states. The only trace they left were the photographs, jewelry, and personal mementos their sadistic murderer displayed on his bureau shelf—macabre trophies of his kills.
Until the police uncovered his grim garden of death...
The nightmare might never have ended if state troopers hadn't arrested Rifkin for a minor traffic violation. Wrapped in a blue tarp in the back of his truck they found the decomposing body of a young streetwalker. Hours after the grisly discovery, horrified detectives listened as Rifkin coldly confessed to at least 17 murders, making him one of the most vicious serial killers of all time—worse than Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross and Son of Sam! Maria Eftimiades tells this shocking true story in Garden of Graves.