Richard Kuklinski was in life a true monster and a sadistic murderer. Some of the crimes he perpetrated are beyond belief, the embodiment of living nightmares. Referred to as the "Ice man" and dreaded throughout the criminal underworld, he was for a time a top mafia hit man.
Richard Kuklinski was born, the second of four children, on April 11, 1935, to Polish/Irish parents in a poor area in Jersey City. His father was a brakeman for the railway and his mother labored in a meat packing factory. His parents were physically violent to Richard and to his brothers, beating them constantly. In 1940, the beatings resulted in the fatality of Kuklinski's elder brother, Florian. His parents hid the cause of the child's death from the police, saying he had slipped down a flight of stairs.
His alcoholic father ultimately deserted the family, leaving them to fend for themselves.
In 1949 at the age of fourteen Richard perpetrated his first homicide when he beat a neighborhood bully to death with a club. After his first murder Richard was scared, believing he would be charged for the crime but he also felt an exhilaration and began to enjoy the feeling of power that he obtained from killing.
Barely out of his teens, Kuklinski had garnered the standing of being an explosive tough street thug who would beat or kill anyone who he didn't like or who upset him. According to Kuklinski it had been during this time that his connection with Roy DeMeo, a associate of the Gambino Crime Family, was started. It was this association that would outline the rest of his life.
Brutality would often precede death for a number of of his targets. This included his own explanation of inducing his victims to bleed, then tying the individuals up in rat infested locations. The rodents, lured to the smell of blood would gradually consume the unfortunates alive.
He also enjoyed carving up his victims alive utilizing a power saw. He described this technique as messy. His potential for violence and torture was positively mind-numbing. He killed thirteen of his victims after severing their lower spines with a screwdriver. They would be paralyzed and powerless to move as they watched as he sliced their bodies apart.
Whenever asked why he murdered that way he did it for the "physical exercise".
Richard was a pro in employing cyanide to poison individuals. He would get it in liquid form and place it in their beverage or simply spilling it on them, where it would get into their circulatory system eventually killing them. His techniques for disposing corpses consisted of dumping them in lakes, roadsides, park benches, steel drums, and crushing them in cars at a junkyard .
While he was making a living as a professional hit man, he met and married Barbara Pedrici, and eventually fathered two daughters and a son. Taking after his father, Kuklinski started to beat and abuse Barbara and the children. On the exterior, the Kuklinski family was shown admiration by neighbors and friends as appearing to be happy and well adjusted.
None of his family nor any of his neighbors ever knew of his criminal actions, instead assuming that he was a successful entrepreneur.
Originally nicknamed "The Polack" by his Italian Mafia colleagues because of his Polish heritage, Kuklinski soon earned the nickname "Iceman" subsequent to his experimenting with disguising the time of death of his victims by freezing their corpses.
Throughout his lifetime, he boasts to have murdered over two hundred people. He claims that he feels no regret for murdering people. He says that he doesn't think about his methods because they do trouble him if he thinks about them enough.
When several affiliates of Kuklinski's turned up murdered in rapid succession, a task force was put together with the New Jersey authorities and the ATF, exclusively to investigate crimes connected to Richard Kuklinski.
Agent Dominick Polifrone was assigned to go deep undercover for a year and a half concealed as a hit man to ultimately connect with and obtained Kuklinski's trust. Kuklinski bragged to the agent about his effectiveness with cyanide and boasted about freezing a body in a industrial freezer in order to conceal the time of death. Certain agent Polifrone would soon become one more of Kuklinski's victims, the task force acted rapidly after taping a number of Kuklinski's confessions and having him consent to do a hit with Polifrone. Since Kuklinski had been so candid about his past murders and prior criminal activities with agent Polifrone. It had become obvious to investigators that Richard was preparing to kill him.
On December 17, 1986, the task force set up a road block and arrested Kuklinski. It took five agents to restrain the massive man (Kuklinski was 6'5" and weight 300lbs. ) and place him in a squad car. He was accused originally with only five murders. Under interrogation he confessed to all of the killings, alluding to the matter as simply business. His family was thoroughly stunned and declined to believe that Richard was a ruthless mafia hit man. After a extensivley televised trial, he was sentenced to two lifetimes in prison making him entitled for parole at the age of 111...
He died on March 5, 2006.
One of his many quotes:
By now you know what I liked most was the hunt, the challenge of what the thing was. The killing for me was secondary. I got no rise as such out of it... for the most part. But the figuring it out, the challenge -- the stalking and doing it right, successfully -- that excited me a lot. The greater the odds against me, the more juice I got out of it."
#AMindMadeForMurder...
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