The Iceman (2 page)

After many years of frustration, I turned my attention to other projects. My interests had taken me away from the dark side, and I focused on creating educational documentaries and implementing public policy regarding the evolving global water and sanitation crisis and its ultimate impact on international security. This became my passion.

The curse was broken in 2013 when Kuklinski’s story finally made it to the big screen. The film,
The Iceman
, starring Michael Shannon as Richard Kuklinski and directed by Ariel Vromen, is based on this book and the seventeen hours of interviews I conducted with Kuklinski. It took more than twenty years, but my objective was finally realized.

Over the years a great deal of misinformation about Richard Kuklinski has circulated, most of it coming directly from Kuklinski himself. In interviews for two subsequent HBO documentaries and for another book, he spun tall tales and portrayed himself as the monster he thought the world wanted him to be. He was allowed to glorify himself. But he was enough of a monster on his own, unembellished, and all the more frightening because he didn’t come from hell as he might have wanted the public to believe. He was the result of his upbringing. Under the right—or should I say, wrong—circumstances, any one of us could have grown up to become just like him. That’s the real terror of his story.

I’m proud of my work on the Iceman project and how it contributed to this book. Our intent was to show the horrifying ripple effect of child abuse and the resulting post-traumatic stress syndrome, which
took an aberrant turn in Kuklinski’s case. The message I hope you come away with is that violence begets violence.

Read on and you will be fascinated and horrified by his strange tale. You will also become engrossed in the story of the brave men who came together to stop him. Read on and learn the truth about the Iceman.

I remember when I first laid eyes on Richard Kuklinski’s face. It was a weekday afternoon in 1992, and I was in my living room in front of the TV, a stack of VHS tapes piled on the coffee table. My agent had called me a few days earlier and told me that he had a possible book project for me. A producer named Jim Thebaut was making a documentary about a mass murderer from New Jersey nicknamed “the Iceman,” and he wanted a book based on seventeen hours of taped interviews with the killer. He was looking for the right author, someone who could make the Iceman’s story come to life and read like fiction. I had published several well-received crime novels at the time. And, born and bred in North Jersey, I knew the Iceman’s territory.

To be totally honest, the project didn’t sound like a winner to me. Kuklinski claimed to have killed more than 100 people, but I had never heard of him. Not surprising considering that his trial happened at a time when two other crime stories were eating up the headlines, the trials of Robert Chambers (the “Preppy Murderer”) and Margaret Kelly Michaels, a teacher accused of sexually abusing thirty-three preschoolers. (She was convicted, but it was overturned on appeal.) I had been approached to do other books about criminals and I knew that for
the most part in real life they aren’t that interesting as people. They’re rarely as clever and sophisticated as the murderers in novels, characters like “Hannibal Lecter.”

So as I pressed play on the VCR, I intended to watch only as much as I needed to give a polite but informed “no thanks.” But long past midnight I was still watching. The next morning I picked up where I’d left off and stayed with it until I’d viewed the entire seventeen hours. It was just Kuklinski, the camera focused on his face, Jim Thebaut off camera asking him questions. No supporting footage, no crime-scene photos, no family photographs, just him. But I couldn’t stop watching.

There was something about him that riveted my attention. He wasn’t a wild man or a snarling demon. There was a curious disconnect between his appearance and his manner. He was a huge man—bald, long face, hollow cheeks, full gray beard, small wary eyes. Sometimes when asked a question, he would pause and suck air between his teeth, waiting and making the moment uncomfortable. Other times he was affable, flashing a winning smile, and it became easy to see how he could fool people into thinking he was on the up-and-up and that he could get them whatever merchandise they wanted at a great discount, when in fact all he wanted was their money. And once he had it, he eliminated his customers.

He was totally blasé as he described killing after killing—mob hits, road-rage slayings, experiments in murder techniques, lethal scams. He was philosophical about murder, and he understood human greed better than any psychiatrist, using it subtly and seductively to lure his victims with promises of deals that were too good to be true. His victims brought money, he brought a gun—or in some cases, a small spray bottle of cyanide.

I called my agent as soon as I finished the tapes. I was hooked. I wanted to write this book.

Unfortunately Kuklinski wasn’t as excited about me as I was about him. Though he had given Thebaut an extended on-camera interview, he refused to talk to me. Instead he sent me letters. Lots of letters, some of them quite long. Handwritten accounts of various murders. He also
sent me newspaper articles with Post-it notes attached. The messages were cryptic: a place, the name of a restaurant, a gun-caliber, “pop-pop-pop like balloons breaking.”

He gave me lists of names, many of them dead mobsters. Some were men he might have met through his association with Gambino soldier Roy DeMeo; others were puzzles. Was he bragging, implying that he had killed them?

He seldom took direct responsibility for any murder he described. His stories typically started, “There was a guy …,” but it was obvious that he was the guy.

Some of his claims were dubious. For example, he claimed he was part of the hit team that killed Gambino boss Paul Castellano in midtown Manhattan in 1985. It’s highly unlikely that such an important assassination would have been entrusted to someone who wasn’t a made member of the Mafia. As with all his claims, if I couldn’t get some kind of corroboration from law enforcement, I didn’t put it in the book.

When Kuklinski wrote me a letter in which he described in great detail the murder of a “man with a big mouth” in Detroit, it was clear that he was taking credit for the murder of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. When I first read his account, I thought I had struck journalistic gold, but when I consulted investigators who knew the Hoffa case well, the details of Kuklinski’s story didn’t check out. I wondered why he felt he had to add extra value to his brand. Weren’t the crimes he had actually committed enough?

Even though many of his stories didn’t pass the smell test, these letters were nevertheless invaluable … and maddening. They kept coming—thirty in all—but he still refused to see me. I had been working on the book for a year and had completed a first draft when I finally got word from his wife that he would sit for an interview. On January 16, 1992, I spent five and a half hours with him, just the two of us locked in the “lawyer’s room” at Trenton State Prison, no barrier between us, no guards in sight. Before letting me in, prison officials had me sign a release stating that I had no official business there and that
if Kuklinski took me captive, no extraordinary measures would be taken to save me. I was on my own.

When we finally met face-to-face, he was jovial and even told me a joke to break the ice. But when we shook hands, I was very aware that the hand I was holding might have killed up to 100 people. As we entered the room, he immediately took a seat at the table with his back to the door. I realized later that this was a deliberate maneuver. He wanted to watch my eyes to see how often I looked for the guard through the small window in the door. I think he wanted to gauge my fear.

He told me little of substance in the first two hours. He kept his sunglasses on and evaded my questions. Finally I told him we weren’t getting anywhere and started to pack up, putting away my tape recorder. That’s when he started to talk. Perhaps the tape recorder spooked him. After all he had been burned by ATF Special Agent Dominick Polifrone’s hidden tape recorder. But as he talked, I started scribbling on a legal pad, and the more he talked the quicker I scribbled. I have a feeling he got a kick out of having some control over me.

I had brought along the letters and newspaper clippings he’d sent and asked for clarification. He talked about many murders, some that he hadn’t put in his letters, but I noticed that some of his descriptions were quick and cursory. When I pressed him for details, he’d just shrug.

But with other murders, he was expansive. When he told me how he had murdered pharmacist Paul Hoffman, he gave me all the particulars. I suspect he made Hoffman’s murder his most complete story out of spite. He knew the police wanted to recover Hoffman’s body because his widow was desperate to give her husband a proper burial. He told me every little detail about that murder except where the body was. He said he didn’t know.

Some of his descriptions were so vivid I instinctively believed he had committed the crime. But the sketchier the description, the more I doubted. Some of his stories stood up to close scrutiny. Others remain mysteries … or just fiction.

One afternoon, months after my visit to the prison, Kuklinski called me at home. He asked how the book was coming along and said if I
needed more murders to “spice it up,” he might be able to come up with a few.

I just shook my head. “Richard,” I said, “I have a feeling if I listen to you long enough, you’ll tell me you shot President Lincoln.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

But despite his boasts and lies, Kuklinski was the real deal. He was without question one of the most prolific and deceptive killers ever encountered by American law enforcement. His story is unique, and my goal in writing this book was to present him without hype or enhancement. The reality of this man’s life is horrible enough.

I was fortunate to have met many people in law enforcement who generously gave me their time and insights about Kuklinski. Several of those people became good friends, and I’m grateful to know these courageous professionals who stopped Kuklinski and undoubtedly saved the lives of people who would have become his victims.

The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer
is a portrait of a life gone wrong, the one cell out of a million that becomes cancerous and grows to kill. Kuklinski’s wife once pointed out that plenty of people grow up poor and abused in the projects—what gave Richard the “right” to become a killer? There’s no good answer for that. He certainly seemed to enjoy killing, but it wasn’t a psychosexual compulsion with him. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t a serial killer. Still, were his deadly impulses beyond his control? Or was it something he did because, as he told me, “I found out murder was a way to solve my problems”?

The Iceman died in prison in 2006 at the age of seventy. To say the least, he was a complex individual—abused son, abusive husband, doting father, con man, killer. What you will read here are the facts of his life.

Anthony Bruno

February 2012

The boy stood in the shadows, leaning against the brick wall, listening to the night. The distant clack of diesel engines from the Hoboken train yards filled the sky over the Sixteenth Street projects. Tugboats on the Hudson sounded their horns as they pushed garbage scows downriver, heading out to sea. The rumble of the incinerator on the other side of the brick wall vibrated the boy’s back. It seemed like they burned garbage all the time around here. He looked up at the stars shining dully through the drifting smoke from the incinerator. For fourteen-year-old Richard Kuklinski, life was
all
garbage, and he just couldn’t take any more. He’d had it.

The warm bricks heated his back as his breath turned to vapor on the cold air. Down by his side, he held the wooden closet pole. His hand was sweaty as his eyes darted into the darkness and he listened for the footsteps, for that voice. Johnny’s voice.

He glanced up at the projects, the lights in the windows. His apartment was up there somewhere, but he wasn’t sure which window was his. It didn’t matter really. The apartments were all the same here, and they all stunk. The heavy wooden pole came from the hallway
closet, the only closet in the whole apartment. It was stupid having a closet pole up there, the way he figured. There were hardly any clothes to move when he took it down. Just about the only clothes he and his little brother and sister owned were the ones they wore. Whenever something wore out and his mother could afford it, they’d just go downtown and replace it, wear it home stiff, sometimes with the tags still on. He felt his frayed shirtfront, ashamed of the way he had to go around. The other kids in the projects teased him all the time, but the most stinging remarks always came from Johnny. “Richie the rag boy.” “Hobo Richie.” “The skinny Polack.”

His mother never listened to him. She always bought his clothes big so he wouldn’t outgrow them too fast, she said. But he was a skinny kid, and he never grew into them. They just flapped around him as if he were some kind of a … hobo.

Might as well be a hobo
, he thought. He spent all his time wandering the streets as it was, staying to himself. He didn’t hang out in gangs the way other kids did. He didn’t get along with those kids. He preferred his own company, walking around, seeing what there was to see, watching the sailors getting drunk and picking up whores over in Hoboken, watching the tired factory workers dragging themselves in and out of the Maxwell House factory just to make a buck, watching people arguing with shopkeepers up in Journal Square, going crazy to save a few pennies on a pound of potatoes.

It was all garbage. People going nuts just so they could grab a little piece of something for themselves. But it was all garbage. Couldn’t they see that?

One time he was over on Henderson Street, just walking around, when he spotted this truck parked in front of the Manischewitz factory. The back of the truck was open, and it was stacked high with wooden crates. As he got closer, he could see that there were bottles in the crates, bottles of wine. There was writing stenciled on the crates, but it was all in that Jewish writing,
just like in the window of that butcher shop over on Newark Avenue. There was only one word in English: “Kosher.” Richie didn’t know what that meant, but he’d heard that Jews used a lot of wine in their religious ceremonies and Jews had money. They probably didn’t drink cheap stuff because they didn’t have to, so he figured this wine had to be worth something.