Richard Kuklinski
Richard Kuklinski (April 11, 1935 – March 5, 2006) was a notorious hit man known as "The Iceman" who was connected to the Mafia.
Life
Kuklinski was born in, Jersey City, New Jersey. His father was an alcoholic who regularly came home drunk and beat Kuklinski and his mother. Later in life, Kuklinski claimed that his father killed his older brother Florian and that it was covered up as an accident. Kuklinski would claim that it was during these beatings that he first began to feel the "nothingness" that occurred when he committed murder. After periods of being beaten, Kuklinski began to kill cats and dogs for fun, one of the warning signs of psychopathy in children.
At the age of fourteen he got into a street fight in which he beat the other boy bloody; the next day, the boy died as a result of the injuries he sustained. Kuklinski stated later in life that while he felt remorse for the murder, and was sorry he had committed it, he also felt empowered for the first time in his life.
When he was sixteen, Kuklinski's parents abandoned him. Homeless, he became a notorious thug on the streets by fighting or killing anyone that got in the way of his survival. On one occasion, he was harassed by six other boys on the street. Richard grabbed a pipe and beat every single one of them to near-death.
When he was older, he met a mobster named Roy DeMeo, who later in life would become a made member of the Gambino crime family. Kuklinski started out doing robberies and other chores for the family, but his talent for killing was quickly realized. He stood out amongst his associates, standing over 6 ft 4 in(193 cm) without shoes and weighing close to 300 lb (135 kg).
Over the next thirty years, Kuklinski killed regularly, although an exact number has never been settled upon by authorities; Kuklinski himself, at various times, claimed to have killed between 100 and 200 individuals.
It should be noted however that a number of Kuklinski's claims hold little credence, as he has been caught lying a number of times and even attempted to bribe lawyers involved with a new murder case against Sammy Gravano (see [1]).
Despite Kuklinski's claims that he was a frequent killer for DeMeo, no DeMeo crew members that became witnesses for the government claimed that Kuklinski was involved in the murders they committed. Surveillance photos only caught Kuklinski visiting DeMeo's main headquarters, the Gemini Lounge, one time and that visit was apparently to purchase a handgun from the Brooklyn crew. At one time Kuklinski claimed to have been responsible for the 1983 murder of Roy DeMeo, although all 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 (see [2]).
At the same time he carried out a career as a hit man, Kuklinski met and married a woman and fathered children. His children never had any idea that their father was a hit man, instead believing, like Kuklinski's neighbors, that he was a successful businessman.
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. Kuklinski himself claims that he used a Mr. Softee ice cream truck for this purpose, although the FBI doubts the veracity of this claim. LAter on, he told Philip carlo thast he got the idea from another hitman, who drove a mister softee truck to appear inconspicuous. Kuklinski's method was uncovered by the authorities when once, Kuklinski failed to let one of his victims properly thaw before disposing of the body, and the coroner found chunks of ice in the corpse's heart.
When the authorities finally caught up with Kuklinski in 1986, they based their case almost entirely on the testimony of an undercover agent. The agent had acted like he wanted to hire Kuklinski for a hit and recorded Kuklinski speaking in detail about how he would do it. Kuklinski was sentenced to two life sentences in 1988, and he would have become eligible for parole in 2046, at which time he would be 111 years old.
While incarcerated, Kuklinski became a darling of the psychological community, granting interviews to psychiatrists and criminologists about his upbringing, criminal career, and personal life. Several of these interviews were filmed, and became a series of documentary movies aired on HBO. philip carlo also made a book in 2006 called "The Ice Man".
In one interview, Kuklinski claimed that the prospect of killing a woman or a child disgusted him, although he would be willing to do anything asked of him to a man. He also confessed that once he had wanted to use a crossbow to carry out a hit, but, not wanting to use this method without having "tested" it first, while driving his car, he picked a man at random, he told the HBO interviewer, asking his victim for directions. When the man bent forward, Kuklinski said, he shot him in the forehead with the crossbow..."it went half-way through his head."
Kuklinski later stated that only once had he felt upset in the commission of a crime: He once kidnapped one of his victims, and rather than conventionally murder them, he tied them up so tightly that the ropes drew blood. He then left the person in a cave in the wilderness, where he was eaten alive by animals (more specifically rats) attracted by the smell of blood. Kuklinski filmed the person's death, and claimed that, upon viewing it, felt disgusted for the first and only time in regard to a murder he had committed.
Kuklinski died of unknown causes at 1:15 AM on March 5, 2006, in Trenton, New Jersey at the age of 70. He was in a secure wing at St. Francis Medical Center. Although authorities say they believe he died of natural causes, the timing of his death is considered suspicious by some, as he was scheduled to testify that he had killed a New Jersey police officer in the 1980s on the orders of former Gambino crime family underboss Sammy Gravano. he 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 the hit man's testimony they had insufficient evidence to continue.
In April of 2006, news reports surfaced that Kuklinski had confessed to author Philip Carlo that he was part of a group of five men who kidnapped and murdered famed union boss Jimmy Hoffa. [3] However, during the HBO interview he disclaimed all knowledge of Hoffa's fate, claiming that he'd only heard rumors, specifically, that Hoffa had been killed, placed into a car which was junked and shipped overseas. Yet, in The Ice Man he says he stabbed him in the back of the head with a knife, put him in a barrel and buried him in a junkyard. he also says that they later had to retrieve the barrel, put it in a car which was junked and shipped overseas.
Trivia
- World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Superstar "Stone Cold" Steve Austin modeled his in-ring persona after Kuklinski upon viewing the Kuklinski interviews on HBO.
- The US metal band Macabre recorded a song about Kuklinski, titled "The Iceman"; it can be found on the Murder Metal album.
- The hardcore punk band Fatal Riot recorded a song about Kuklinski, titled "Kuklinski".
- The 2006 video game Hitman: Blood Money featured a mission that involved a counter-assassination; one of the mission's targets was called Raymond Kulinsky, an obvious reference to the man himself.
See also
External links
Sources
- The Ice Man: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer by Anthony Bruno, 1993, ISBN 0-440-21331-2.
- Interview: Confessions of a Mafia Hitman (part 1:1992, part 2: 2001)