Richard Kuklinski | The Iceman
Richard “Iceman” Kuklinski (April 11, 1935 – March 5, 2006) was a convicted murderer and notorious contract killer. He worked for several Italian-American crime families, and claimed to have murdered over 200 people over a career that lasted thirty years. He was the older brother of the convicted rapist and murderer Joseph Kuklinski.
The First Murder
Kuklinski first killed his number one enemy. In 1948, Kuklinski, 13, ambushed and beat Charley Lane, the leader of a small gang of teenagers known as “The Project Boys,” who had bullied him for some time. Following a particularly bad beating Richard sought revenge, attacking Charley Lane with a thick wooden dowel eventually beating him to death. Although he denied wanting to kill Lane, the bully did not wake up. Kuklinski then dumped Lane’s body off a bridge in South Jersey after removing his teeth and chopping off his finger tips with a hatchet in an effort to prevent identification of the body. The body was never found.
Mob Association
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 33 and 200 individuals.
State & 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.
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.
Incarceration & Death
In 1988, a New Jersey court convicted Kuklinski of five murders and sentenced him to consecutive life sentences, making him ineligible for parole until age 110. In 2003, he pleaded guilty to the 1980 murder of NYPD detective Peter Calabro and drew another 30 years.
In the Calabro murder, in which Sammy “The Bull” Gravano was also charged, Kuklinski said he parked his van on the side of a narrow road, forcing other drivers to slow down to pass. He lay in a snowbank until Calabro came by at 2 a.m., then stepped out and shot him with a shotgun.
Kuklinski died 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, although the timing of his death has been labeled suspicious; Kuklinski was scheduled to testify that former Gambino crime family underboss Sammy Gravano had ordered him to murder New York Police Department Detective Peter Calabro. Kuklinski had admitted to murdering Calabro with a shotgun on the night of March 14, 1980. He denied knowing that Calabro was a police officer, but said he would have murdered him regardless.
At the time Kuklinski was scheduled to testify, Gravano was already incarcerated for an unrelated charge, serving a 19-year prison sentence for running an ecstasy 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. At the request of Kuklinski’s family, forensic pathologist Michael Baden examined the results of Kuklinski’s autopsy to determine if there was evidence of poisoning. Baden concluded he died of natural causes.
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.
