Like the Yorkshire Ripper, Joel The Ripper was brought to book by a traffic stop. The documentary makers speak to the officer in question, Sean Ruane, who cannot have imagined what this particular traffic stop would lead to. They also speak, at length, to Joel Rifkin himself, the unassuming social outcast who would eventually murder seventeen woman, all apparently prostitutes.
He describes matter of factly how he murdered his first, unidentified victim at the family home while no one else was there, how he murdered one woman kind of by accident, in an hotel room. Two people are seen going in, so two should be seen going out, he reasoned. He overcame that problem by buying a trunk and taking the body out in that. This was said to have been inspired by the film "Frenzy". Rifkin drew inspiration from both films and other serial killers. Edifying stuff. Not. But rivetting all the same.
