The Girlfriends S2/E4: Desperately Seeking Susie

Novel.

Hey, listener, in this episode, we'll talk a lot about acts of extreme violence, including murder. We'll mention serial killers, and we'll speak about drug use and sex work. But also we'll hear our very own doctor, detective Mindy Shapiro, get the chance to spar with a real life police detective. If you feel impacted by any of the themes while listening, I encourage you to check out our charity partner, DNA

Do you mind if I send the text? Yeah, I might get something right away.

What who do you know?

In the last episode you heard producer Anna and Raoul Montero are New York citizen sleuth zeroing in on one killer, in particular, Joel Rifkin. Shortly before Anna went to visit Raoul, she got her hands on a book.

Not just any book.

It's called from the Mouth of a Monster, which is written by someone who attended college with Rifkin. In the book, Rifkin confesses to seventeen murders between nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety three. His first victim was a sex worker named Susie, who he killed in March of nineteen eighty nine. He told the books author about her murder and what he did with her remains.

Driving back into New York City, he had it straight for an area near the East River in Lower Manhattan, the same area where he had been serviced by street walkers countless times before. His head was spinning as he parked the truck and flung the bags containing Susie's arms and torso into the frigid's swirling waters.

Holy shit, Rifkin dumps Susie's torso in the East River.

And you know where The East River.

Opens up into the Bay which flows directly towards Front Street, Pier three, Staten Island. I'm Carol Fisher and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcast, this is the Girlfriend's Our Last Sister, Episode four, Desperately seeking Susie Coat.

Am I taking us the wrong way?

Yes?

That must be that way that way.

I'm with Mindy and producer Anna in Alphabet City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Oh, I forgot to have too short legged peak pop.

Here, Come on, Goliath, we're here because we've been mining from the mouth of a monster for more information. In the book, Riff can describe picking up a sex worker named Susie in Alphabet City back in the eighties. This block was one of New York's Red Lake districts.

It feels powerful, like walking on pavements that you know somebody.

Yet, Oh, it's really eerie to meet.

Yeah, it's weird finding it with Yeah.

We're walking towards Tompkins Square Park.

It's a natural meeting point in the area and was a popular hangout for sex workers. But according to our resident New york Or Mindy, it has a radical pass going back much further.

It was kind.

Of the place where people stood on their soapboxes and expressed dissenting views in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, but then in the sixties and seventies it sort of became a free speech revolutionary place.

And that would be the sound of a pneumatic drill. New York is such a peaceful place.

In the seventies and eighties, it became sort of like a needle park, and the vitat devastated during the AIDS epidemic. The police kept on trying to clean it up, and they were.

Like riots here.

I remember seeing as a kid lies on horseback and you know, with their batons.

At the time, there were clashes between the police and locals protesting against the gentrification of the park and homeless people being pushed out, but ultimately the police won the Tompkins Square park that we're in todays, where trendy moms push around expensive strollers while sipping out lattes. We sit down on a bench and Anna pulls out a copy of the book From the Mouth of a Monster.

An excerpt from the book where Joel confessed to earling Susie, and I was wondering if maybe also want to read it because she proud about her Yeah.

Okay, yeah, because reshig in silence is not good for a podcast.

We're reading this book because we're longing to learn whatever we can about this woman who could be our lost sister.

She said her name was Susie.

After they negotiated a price for her to accompany him to Long Island. The relationship quickly deteriorated and his blood began to boil. Before leaving the city, she wanted to make a few stops for drugs.

First, we stopped at her girlfriend's house.

Were called, Joel contemptuously, because you always have to take care of their narcotic need.

She's in this.

Girl's bathroom like for hours as she chatted and smoked with her friend.

We're not going to read out the whole passage. It goes into graphic detail about Susie's violent death, but there is one moment that for us gives a small but powerful insight into who this woman was. It happened just after Rifkin attacked her and thought she was already dead.

To his horror, Susie suddenly popped up on the couch in a last ditch effort to salvage her life. She tore into her assailant and out of shape man with all the strengths she could muster. She even bit my finger almost to the bone.

Joel said, how do you feel, count, I'm a little in shock, actually, I'm just a little bit in All of her strength to get the shit kicked out of her and then to kind of rise again and try.

To, you know, set herself free.

She must have.

Been an amazingly strong woman, not just physically but emotionally.

Yeah, it's just it's horrible.

It's just horrific.

Yeah, nothing living, nothing living, should die like that.

The three of us contemplate what we've just heard as we watch the other people in the park pass by, people who are probably doing something much more normal with their days, and we wonder where.

Do we go from here. We know that when the.

Book From the Mouth of a Monster was published in two thousand and one, Susie's torso is still missing. But it's been over twenty years since this book was written.

And we're wondering was she ever found.

We put in a freedom of information request to Hope Well Police department, who handled the criminal investigation into Susie's murder, and luckily, unlike our usual track record, we don't need to wait very long for a response. It's more info than we bargained for, So I call up Mindy and ask her.

To talk me through it.

Oh, you don't even really want to know.

Oh God, your tone doesn't sound good.

Yeah, well, I've gotten a whole bunch of information.

I'm trying to be kind. This is kind of difficult information.

Really yeah, it's bad. Yeah, it's like really bad.

I read it and had an emotional reaction to it, so hearing it might be difficult.

Oh boy, Mindy's not wrong. It was difficult to hear. So I'll cut to the chase. We told you before that Susie's torso was never found, but some of her other remains were. In March of nineteen eighty nine, Susie's head was discovered on a golf course in Hope Will Township, New Jersey, fifty five miles down from New York. A short while later, her were discovered in a wooded area sixty five miles away. Nobody could understand such a senseless killing, and at the time.

Nobody could figure out who Susie was.

But in these documents we see the great lens the police went to and trying to identify her. They did nationwide requests asking for information on any missing person that would fit the description of the murdered woman. They put out flyers, held press conferences, They did canine searches, had divers dredged lakes, and a helicopter did an aerial search.

Of the golf course where her head was found.

The police spoke to the FBI about building a psychological profile of the killer. They conducted interviews with parents of missing women who believed her remains could be their daughters or sisters. After this initial flurry of activity, the case went cold. But then in two thousand one From the Mouth of a Monster came out and in the book, Riskin admits to killing a woman he knew is Susie. He then admits to dumping her head on a golf

Another dead end until she.

Looks at it and she says, Yeah, I think you're right.

I think that's your girl.

Hi, Stephen, it's wonderful to talk to transcontinentally.

Across the US.

Him Anina, I'm.

In northern California.

Where are you.

I'm actually talking to you from Mammouth County, New Jersey.

I know it well.

I grew up across the river okay, hi mindy speaking to Captain Stephen Orbanski, who in twenty thirteen was Detective Orbanski. Back then he was working in the missing persons unit, and he was the guy you called when you wanted help getting to the bottom of a case.

I was called by two detectors from Hopewell Township Police Department. They called me for some advice and they want to get my personal opinion on what we can do more with the case.

The Hopewell cops pass on all of their case files to Urbanski, but the thing that stands out the most is the book where Riskin describes the first time he killed a sex worker.

He said that he could only remember her name as Susie, but he didn't have a last name. He didn't know any anything about her. So now we're looking at a girl named Susan. That's all we have.

Right.

The first thing you do in trying to identify someone is look at the missing person's databases for a match. But when nothing turned up, Urbanski suggested trying something else, looking at arrest records of New York sex workers from the eighties and nineties.

And we pulled all the girls that were named Susan. There was one that I was able to look at. It was a girl by the name of Susan Spencer. That's kind of something that stuck out to me. We also noticed after her last arrest, she kind of went off the map.

Urbanski was able to obtain an arrest photo of Susan Spencer. In it, he sees a pale woman with long, light brown hair and blue eyes. Her face is covered with marks the kind you'd associate with the heavy drug user. But other than the photo, Urbanski struggled to find any other information in the system.

We couldn't find any reports on Susan being missing. I think I went home that night after a long, long day of trying to look through pictures and doing interviews, you know, eating dinner, and right away open up my laptop computer and I start looking at different websites.

Detective or Banski starts combing through New York and New Jersey databases. He's hoping to match the arrest photo he has with the missing person's report.

A picture came up, believe it or not.

I actually get my wife involved, and she comes over yelling at me because I have these pictures throughout on the top of.

My table and I'm trying to review.

It, but she looks at it and she says, yeah, I think you're right.

I think that's your girl.

But the missing woman's name isn't Susan Spencer.

Her name is Heidi Bulch. The missing person's report for Heidi Balt was filed in two thousand and one by her aunt, Robin. At the time, Robin lived in New York, so the detectives decided to pay her a visit.

Pulling up to New York City, it's a lot going on. There's a lot of traffic, you know, people walking by, and.

We pull up to this high rise building. It was more of apartment complex.

I don't know how to explain how I felt that day, but definitely excited, like is this it? Is this going to be the person that we looking for?

Is this the answer an answer that the Hoopwo Police Department had been searching for for twenty four years.

I remember knocking on the door and an elderly lady answered the door, and I think just her face alone was like that total shock, you know, is this about Heidi.

Urbanski and his colleagues try to find out more information about Heidi from her aunt.

She kind of talked her up, saying that she was a good kid growing up and she just got involved with the wrong people and got involved with drugs, and she just went down a wrong avenue during her you know, upbringing, and that it kind of brought it to dark places.

The next stage in the investigation was to find Heidi's parents and get their DNA tested against the head and legs found in New Jersey. The detective sent local police to Heidie's father, who lived in Florida, while her Banski and two Hopewoll cops make it drive to Baltimore to track down Heidie's mother, and after a two hour journey, they pull up the Heidie's mom's house. They knock on the door, she lets them in, and then they tell her we think we found your daughter's remains.

She was very quiet when we told her.

She looked like was maybe ready to cry or like, you know, she didn't really have any questions for us. She gave us, you know, the background out of a daughter be involved with the prostitution and the drugs, and she said she has some problems back then herself since then got her life together. So I explained to her about the DNA, how we're going to compare it to the head that was found on the golf course and the legs. She was more than willing to give her DNA.

They take a swab from the inside of her cheek, they pack it away in a sterile container, and then they haul asked back to get it tested.

There was a one hundred percent match. It was definitely Heidi.

Finally, twenty four years after Heidi's murder, her case was solved. But when Heidi's DNA profile was entered into the system in the spring of twenty thirteen, there was another match for a torso, a torso that was buried on Hart Island. Okay, listener, so, if you're anything like me, you've probably been listening to this while putting dinner in the oven, driving to work, and getting your nails done all at the same time.

So let's recap what we know so far, because it's a lot.

Joe Rifkin killed his first victim in March of nineteen eighty nine and confessed to dumping her torso in New York's East River. We now know that her name was Heidi Balch. Twenty four years later, in twenty thirteen, detectives investigating Heidi's case located her torso on Hart Island.

And why does all this matter to us?

Well, because we know that our lost sister's torso was disinterred from Hart Island in twenty thirteen. We've said before that the only reason our girl would have been removed from her grave on Heart Island is because she was identified, or because her body became part of a criminal investigation, or both. Could the torso of our lost sister and the torso of Heidi Balch be one and the same. Mindy pitches our theory to Captain Urbanski.

In nineteen eighty nine, we knew that a torso had washed up on Shoren's Taten Island and that it was identified as the torso of Ga Cats and the family buried the remains of that torso in a cemetery in Queens Yes, the torso nineteen ninety nine or two thousand, somewhere around there.

It was exhumed and oops, that's Mindy dropping her headphones.

Way to play a cool detective Shapiro.

And the remains were basically buried on Hart Island. So we got actually the records from Heart Island and saw that the body was exhumed in two thousand and thirteen.

It all seems to add up to us.

There's a lot of questions because there's so many bodies there. You might have another torso that's in. I know, for fact, you'd have a couple.

We can't deny that he's right. At this point.

Our theory is still just a theory. But a reality check is not all Urbanski gives mindy. He also has much appreciated advice for his fellow detective. What really matters in an investigation like this.

If my sister, my mother, or somebody my wife went missing, I would want somebody putting their heart and.

Soul into it.

So do your job basically, and do it with compassion, do it with hard work, do it with an open mind, and do it as as if it was your own child.

That's so beautiful.

You know, the team here and my girlfriend Carol, they have dubbed me a dog with a bone because I'm just so persist about this. I frankly have not really found that term endearing. But speaking to you and your persistence, it makes me feel like that's not such a bet term.

After all, I knew you'd come around eventually, Mindy, despite Urbanski's doubts, we really believe that Heidi Balt is our lost sister. There are just too many similarities, like the estimated date of death in early nineteen eighty nine and the year of disinterminent from Hart Island in twenty thirteen.

Dear Anne, I'm sorry to email you about this so out of the blue, but I've been searching for you for over a year. My name is Annasinfield. I'm a journalist and radio producer from the UK.

It's funny I remember getting one of these emails from Anna myself before this crazy journey started. In the email, Anna tells Anne all about our investigation, that we think there's a link between our last sister and Heidi. That we want to bring her cousin's story to life and make sure she's not just a plot point in Gailcat's murder.

I come with absolutely no judgment of the way she lived or how life happened to her. I'd just love to know more about her as a person. All the best, Annas.

Anna sends off the email, and we hope and pray that Heidi's family are interested in speaking with us.

For now, we wait.

This whole journey has been one crazy ride.

We'd been to the medical Examiner.

We have like case number les.

Yes, the Emmy case number is eighty nine five six.

We trilled the archives at New York's biggest public library.

And I'd like all information that I can find about that Torso.

We spoke to pri investigators, criminal profilers, DNA experts. We went to the biggest public burial ground in the USA and trailed around.

The city and beyond looking for leads.

Hundreds and hundreds of hours have gone into this investigation, but our love and friendship have gone into it too, not to mention copious amounts of food and wine.

And now it all comes down to this one last shot in the dark.

Hello, Hi, is this Anne?

It is?

That's next time on the girlfriends Our Lost Sister, The girlfriends Our Last Sister is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show is hosted by me Carol Fisher, and our chief investigator is Mindy Shapiro. To find me on social media, search Carol A. Fisher, That's Carol with an E. The season is written and produced by Anna Sinfield and Lee Meyer. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. The editor is Joe Wheeler.

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