Richard Kuklinski
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| Richard Kuklinski | |
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 Police mugshot of Richard Kuklinski, 4 years before his final arrest.
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| Born | April 11, 1935 Jersey City, New Jersey |
| Died | March 5, 2006 (aged 70) Trenton, New Jersey |
| Penalty | Life imprisonment from 1988 |
| Status | Deceased |
| Occupation | Contract killer |
| Spouse | Barbara Kuklinski |
| Children | 5 |
Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski (April 11, 1935 – March 5, 2006) was a convicted murderer and notorious contract killer. Also known as the Ice Man, he worked for several Italian-American crime families, and claimed to have murdered over 200 people over a career that lasted forty-three years, he even killed his first victim at age fourteen.[1]
He was the older brother of the convicted rapist and murderer Joseph Kuklinski.
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[edit] Birth and early life
Richard Leonard Kuklinski was the second of four children born to Stanley and Anna Kuklinski of Polish origin. Kuklinski was born on April 11, 1935 in Jersey City, New Jersey. His mother Anna Kuklinski was a laborer at a local meat processing plant, she was extremely strict and she would often beat Richard.
When Kuklinski was five years old, his older brother Florian was killed by his father during one of his many beatings. Upon discovering he had killed his son, Stanley ordered Anna to call the hospital and report that Florian had fallen down the stairs and hit his head. Soon Stanley left his family to live with his mistress, and Richard was left to fend for himself. By age 16, he was already known for his explosive temper and his willingness to kill.
Kuklinski's first victim was Charley Lane, a leader of a six-boy gang, Charley would often beat and harass Kuklinski. Bitterness grew in Richard's heart until he could no longer bear it, he began plotting the demise of Charley. Richard read many magazines about criminals upon which he based his actions. Richard removed a rod from his closet and waited till charley was walking alone, he then brutally murdered charlie with the rod, removed his fingers and teeth (so as not to be identified) and threw the body into frozen lake, the body was never found. Kuklinski then hunted down the remaining five boys and beat then nearly to death. During an HBO documentary "Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Hit Man" that it was the day he killed Charley Lane that he learned it was "better to give than to receive".[2] According to his own statements, Kuklinski would purposely injure a person if they "made him feel bad about something". Richard especially despised "loudmouthed people", reminders of his abusive father. Richard also states that he had abused animals as a young child, such as killing cats and dogs by methods of torture.
[edit] Association with the Gambinos and DeMeo
Association with the Gambino crime family came through his relationship with the mobster Roy DeMeo. Kuklinski stated that he started doing robberies and other assignments for the family, one of which was pirating pornographic tapes. But soon his talent for killing was realized and he stood out amongst his associates, standing 6 feet and 5 inches and weighing 300 lb. DeMeo decided to put him to the test. One day, he took Kuklinski out in his car and they parked on a city street. DeMeo then selected an apparently random target, a man out walking his dog. He then told Kuklinski to kill him. Without questioning the order, Kuklinski got out and walked towards the man. As he passed him, he turned and shot the man in the back of the head. From then on, Kuklinski was DeMeo's favorite enforcer.
Over the next thirty years, according to Kuklinski, he killed numerous people, either by gun, strangulation, knife, or poison. The exact number has never been settled upon by authorities, and Kuklinski himself at various times claimed to have killed between 100 and 130 individuals. He favored the use of cyanide since it killed quickly and was hard to detect in a toxicology test. He would variously administer it by injection, putting it on a person's food, by aerosol spray, or by simply spilling it on the victim's skin. One of his favorite methods of disposing of a body was to place it in a 55-gallon oil drum. His other disposal methods included dismemberment, burial, or placing the body in the trunk of a car and having it crushed in a junkyard. He also claimed to have left bodies sitting on park benches, thrown bodies down "bottomless pits" and fed still-alive victims to giant rats in Pennsylvania.
Despite Kuklinski's claims that he was a frequent killer for DeMeo, none of DeMeo's crew members that later became witnesses for the government claimed that Kuklinski was involved in the murders they committed. Only photographed on one occasion at the Gemini Lounge, he reportedly visited the club to purchase a handgun from the Brooklyn crew. Kuklinski once claimed to have been responsible for the 1983 murder of Roy DeMeo, although the available evidence and testimony points to the murderers being fellow DeMeo crew associates Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter as well as DeMeo's supervisor in the Gambino family, Anthony Gaggi[3]
According to Kuklinski, at the same time he was allegedly a career hit man, he met and married Barbara Pedrici, and later fathered two daughters and a son. His family and neighbors were never aware of his activities, instead believing that he was a successful businessman. Sometimes he would get up and leave the house at any time of the day or night to do a job, even if it was in the middle of dinner.
Initially nicknamed "The Polack" by his Italian associates because of his Polish heritage, Kuklinski earned the nickname "Iceman" following his experiments with disguising the time of death of his victims by freezing their corpses in an industrial freezer. Kuklinski himself claims that he used a Mister Softee ice cream truck for this purpose, although the FBI doubts the veracity of this claim.[citation needed] Later, he told author Philip Carlo that he got the idea from a hitman nicknamed "Mister Softee", who drove a Mister Softee truck to appear inconspicuous. Kuklinski's method was uncovered by the authorities when Kuklinski once failed to let one of his victims properly thaw before disposing of the body on a warm summer's night, and the coroner found chunks of ice in the corpse's heart.
Kuklinski became friendly with a man named Robert Prongay, the man nicknamed Mister Softee. Prongay supposedly was a military-trained demolitions technician. It was from him that Kuklinski learned of the different methods of using cyanide to kill his victims. Kuklinski also stated that Mister Softee was "extremely crazy". In 1984, Robert Prongay was found shot to death in his truck. Most believe Kuklinski was the perpetrator, but the killer was never found..
[edit] State and federal manhunt
When the authorities finally caught up with Kuklinski in 1986, they based their case almost entirely on the testimony of an undercover agent. New Jersey State Police detective Pat Kane started the case 6 years prior to the arrest and the investigation involved a joint operation with the New Jersey Attorney General's office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Special Agent Dominick Polifrone had undercover experience specializing in Mafia cases. The New Jersey State Police and the Bureau began a joint operation. Detective Kane recruited Phil Solimene, a close friend of Kuklinski, who introduced undercover agent Polifrone to the killer.[4] The Bureau agent had acted like he wanted to hire Kuklinski for a hit, and recorded him speaking in detail about how he would do it. When state police and federal agents went to arrest Kuklinski they blocked off his street, and it took multiple officers to bring him down. In the process of doing so Mrs. Kuklinski was also arrested and charged with gun possession because the car was in fact registered under her name. When Mrs. Kuklinski was arrested, a police officer put his boot on her back while detaining her. This enraged Kuklinski, and that is one the reasons why they needed multiple officers to bring him down. Kuklinski was sentenced to two life sentences in 1988.
[edit] Incarceration
During his incarceration, Kuklinski granted interviews to prosecutors, psychiatrists, criminologists, writers, and television producers about his criminal career, upbringing, and personal life. Two documentaries, featuring interviews of Kuklinski by Dr. Park Dietz (best-known for his interviews with and analysis of Jeffrey Dahmer) aired on HBO after interviews in 1991 and 2001. Philip Carlo also wrote a book in 2006, entitled The Ice Man.
In one interview, Kuklinski claimed that he would never kill a child and "I probably wouldn't kill a woman". He also confessed that once he had wanted to use a crossbow to carry out a hit but did not want to use the method without having "tested" it first. While driving his car, he picked a man at random to stop and ask for directions. Kuklinski told the HBO interviewer that when the man bent forward, he shot him in the forehead with the crossbow and stated "it went half-way into his head".
He also claimed that he once kidnapped one of his victims, and rather than conventionally murder him, tied him up with tight strips of wet rawhide, which would constrict as they dried. The constriction would be so great as to cause strangulation and draw blood. He then left the man in a "cave" in the "wilderness" where he was eaten alive by rats that were attracted by the smell of blood. Kuklinski claimed he filmed the man’s death as proof to the buyer that the man suffered before he died. In one interview, Kuklinski confessed that he regretted only one murder, which he deemed particularly cruel. As he was about to kill a man, the man began praying to God for his life. Kuklinski told him that he would give God thirty minutes to save the man, but once the time was up, he would be killed. Forcing the man to wait thirty minutes for his inevitable demise struck Kuklinski as his most sadistic murder.
Kuklinski died of unknown causes at the age of 70 at 1:15 a.m. on March 5, 2006. He was in a secure wing at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey at the time. Authorities said they believed he died of natural causes although the timing of his death has been labeled suspicious. Kuklinski was scheduled to testify against former Gambino crime family Underboss Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano to the effect that Kuklinski had killed a decorated NYPD detective named Peter Calabro the night of March 14, 1980 on Gravano's orders.[5] (It should be noted that in 2006 Gravano was serving a 19 year prison sentence for running an Ecstasy distribution ring in Arizona.) Kuklinski also stated to family members that he thought "they" were poisoning him. A few days after Kuklinski's death, prosecutors dropped all charges against Gravano, saying that without Kuklinski's testimony there was insufficient evidence to continue.
[edit] Involvement with Jimmy Hoffa disappearance
In April 2006, news reports surfaced that Kuklinski had confessed to author Philip Carlo that he was part of a group who kidnapped and murdered famed union boss Jimmy Hoffa.[6] However, during the earlier HBO interview he denied any knowledge of Hoffa's fate. Kuklinski claimed that he had only heard rumors, specifically, that Hoffa had been killed, put in a barrel, placed into a Toyota car which was compacted with other cars, and shipped overseas.
[edit] References
- ^ Carlo, Philip The Ice Man, Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, p. 29, and rear cover, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006, Sydney ISBN-13: 978-0-7322-8496-1 ISBN-10: 0-7322-8496-1
- ^ The Iceman Confessions Of A Mafia Hitman. Video (1992).
- ^ The Iceman Throws The Bull. Gangland News.
- ^ Carlo, Philip The Ice Man, p. 299, St. Martin's Griffin, 2006, New York ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37465-5 ISBN-10: 0-312-37465-8
- ^ Carlo, Philip The Ice Man. p. 257, St. Martin's Griffin, 2006
- ^ Who killed Jimmy Hoffa? 'The Iceman' admitteth. New York Daily News (2006-04-17). Archived from the original on 2006-09-02. Retrieved on 2007-11-22.
