The Making Of The Iceman Killer, The Mob’s Most Famous Murderer

The Making Of The Iceman Killer, The Mob’s Most Famous Murderer

To his wife and children as well as his neighbors in suburban New Jersey, Richard Kuklinski was the all-American man. But to the mob and his victims, he was a remorseless killer known as "The Iceman."

Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Kuklinski claimed that he brutally murdered as many as 200 people while working as a hitman for the Mafia — and he allegedly did so in unbelievably gruesome fashion. Using everything from crossbows to icepicks to bombs attached to remote-controlled toys, he took responsibility for the murders of everyone from cops to mob bosses to Jimmy Hoffa. And on one occasion, he even said he tied a man up inside a cave in rural Pennsylvania and let swarms of rats eat him alive. But little evidence has ever been uncovered to support his stories, leading some to believe that this deeply disturbed man was no mass murderer at all.

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Discover the chilling true story of Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski:⁠ https://bit.ly/3NRJEXw

Richard Kuklinski was born on April 11, 1935, in Jersey City to an aggressive alcoholic father and a stern religious mother, both of whom beat him regularly. His father’s beatings were so rough that they killed Kuklinski’s older brother, who authorities were told fell down the stairs.

Kuklinski took the violence he received and gave it back to the world. He tortured and killed neighborhood cats and stray dogs.

In the eighth grade, he dropped out of school, and that same year, at the age of 14, he beat the town bully to death.

The young misanthrope turned into a giant of a man, growing to be six feet, five inches tall and weighing almost 300 pounds.

Then, in the 1950s, Richard Kuklinski got involved with the mafia.

He ended up indebted to mob soldato Roy DeMeo, and when DeMeo sent men to beat him into coughing up his cash, Kuklinski’s stoic acceptance of the thrashing impressed the hardened Mafia man, who brought him on as an associate — after he paid up.

He became an all-purpose criminal, trafficking illegal pornography, staging robberies, and beating those who the mob felt needed a warning.

His knack for handling sticky situations and his ability to consistently pull in cash for the DeMeo crew earned him their respect. In time, it brought him to the attention of the Gambino crime family, of which DeMeo was a member.

Kuklinski wasn’t a professional killer at the time — only a recreational one. But that was all about to change.

Richard Kuklinski Goes Pro And Becomes “The Iceman”

Kuklinski’s reputation eventually spread to the elite of the organized crime world, particularly the notorious DeCavalcante family, who hired him for his first major gang killing.

He approached his new position with professional zeal, taking on extracurricular killings for research — and to satisfy his own craving for murder.

In 1954, he began to make periodic trips from New Jersey to New York City, prowling the Upper West Side of Manhattan for victims. Often his targets were people who annoyed him, someone he felt had slighted him in some small way. Other times he killed at random, just for the sake of killing.

His methods were as variable as his victim selection; he shot, stabbed, strangled, poisoned, or bludgeoned according to his mood. His weapon selection shifted constantly — a decision that prevented the police from suspecting the rash of deaths in the area were the work of one man. He used everything from ice picks and bare knuckles to hand grenades.

According to a statement Richard Kuklinski once made, a nasal-spray bottle filled with cyanide was his favorite.

Kuklinski continued to carry out assignments for DeMeo and the Gambinos, and his willingness to murder without hesitation disturbed even his criminal colleagues, who began to refer to him as the “devil himself.”

He had only two rules: no women and no children. Beyond that, anything was fair game.

On one occasion, Richard Kuklinski recalled preparing to kill a man who was begging and praying for his life. Kuklinski told the man he could have 30 minutes to pray to God to see if God would come and intervene.

“But God never showed up and he never changed the circumstances and that was that. It wasn’t too nice. That’s one thing, I shouldn’t have done that one. I shouldn’t have done it that way,” Kuklinski said.

It was one of the only times Kuklinski ever expressed remorse for his actions.

Things Fall Apart For The Iceman Killer

For 25 years, Richard Kuklinski kept up the family-man facade by thoroughly compartmentalizing his life. He didn’t tell the criminals he worked with anything about his personal life, his family, or where he lived; he never socialized outside of work.

He stayed away from drugs and prostitutes, and he never bought what the mob was selling — he was an employee, not a client.

But in the 1980s, after 25 years of working as a hitman for the mafia, Kuklinski started his own crime ring — and he began to make mistakes.

His undoing was Phil Solimene, a local Mafia man and the closest thing Kuklinski had to a friend. Solimene helped the ATF in a sting operation and presented ATF agent Dominick Polifrone to Kuklinski as a prospective client.

Polifrone came to Kuklinski with a job, then recorded Kuklinski’s promise to murder in exchange for money.

It was the end of the road for the Iceman.

One day in 1986, unmarked cars surrounded Richard and Barbara Kuklinski on their way to breakfast. The cops pointed guns at their heads. Pat Kane, the lead investigator, approached a distraught Barbara in the midst of her confusion and said plainly, “He’s a murderer.”

He was charged with five murders the following day and in 1988 was found guilty of four of them. He was later convicted of two more and given consecutive life sentences.

Detective Pat Kane believed the Iceman killer murdered as many as 300 men, saying, “He killed who he wanted, whenever he wanted.”

After his arrest, Kuklinski wasn’t shy. He gave interviews to prosecutors, psychiatrists, reporters, criminologists, and newscasters — anyone who wanted to talk to him.

He participated in two documentaries about his life and spoke candidly about the things he did and why. He claimed to have killed the notoriously corrupt Jimmy Hoffa, for which he was paid $40,000.

In a TV interview from prison, he said, “I’ve never felt sorry for anything I’ve done. Other than hurting my family. I do want my family to forgive me.”

After 25 years in prison, Kuklinski’s health started deteriorating. In 2005, he was diagnosed with incurable inflammation of the blood vessels and eventually transferred to the hospital, where Barbara would go to see him one last time.

In and out of consciousness, in a moment of clarity, Kuklinski asked doctors to revive him if he should flatline.

But on her way out, Barbara signed a Do-Not-Resuscitate form. A week before he died, they called her to see if she had changed her mind. She hadn’t.