The Iceman (34 page)

If only one sandwich had been poisoned, it’s possible that Kuklinski did intend to go back and fulfill his part of the bargain with Dominick. But if two sandwiches contained the simulated cyanide, perhaps Kuklinski had decided to kill
both
the rich kid and Dominick. The promise of the big arms deal had been dangled in front of his face for months, but nothing had materialized. Perhaps he had lost faith in Dominick and decided to settle for the bird in the hand, killing these two and taking the entire eighty-five thousand dollars that the rich kid was supposed to be bringing to buy three kilos of cocaine.

Or it may have been that Richard Kuklinski’s obsessive love for his wife overruled his desire to make the score. When he learned of Barbara’s illness that morning, returning home to take care of her may have become his paramount concern. Though he did prepare the sandwiches, perhaps he changed his mind. Getting her to the doctor may have become the only thing that really mattered to him that morning.

The police never found the two-tone blue van Kuklinski had told Dominick he had waiting just down the turnpike from the Vince Lombardi Service Area. He did not get a vehicle from Hoss
DiVita in Connecticut the day before, and John Sposato was apparently so broke that day he couldn’t even afford to rent one.

Kuklinski has also reasoned, “Who would eat a cold egg sandwich?” No one, not even a cocaine addict, would eat something that had been hanging around as long as those three sandwiches had.

But if in fact, he did not have a van that morning, perhaps he never intended to kill the “rich kid” at all. But he had poisoned at least one of the sandwiches, so who
did
he intend to kill?

Perhaps the sandwich was actually intended for John Sposato. Kuklinski had never forgiven him for showing up at his house with his two goons. Overweight and slovenly, Sposato was hardly a picky eater. The fact that an egg sandwich was cold and a little stale might not have mattered that much to him.

Another possibility is that Richard Kuklinski was just lazy that day. Why bother killing the rich kid for half of eighty-five thousand dollars when all the while he intended to rip off Dominick later in the week for half a million? Kuklinski knew the police were after him for murder. Why add another killing to his résumé for a relatively paltry amount of money? He didn’t know who this rich kid was, and he had always been very cautious when he killed. Despite Dominick’s assurances that the kid wasn’t connected to the mob, Kuklinski may have feared that their intended victim could very well have had Mafia ties. A spoiled rotten cokehead with money to burn was just the kind of friend a wiseguy would want. Perhaps Kuklinski figured killing this kid simply wasn’t worth the risk.

But only Richard Kuklinski knows why he didn’t show up to kill the “rich Jewish kid” that morning. It is one of many items in the locked box.

Though he admits to freezing Louis Masgay’s body and keeping it on ice for more than two years, Kuklinski will not say
where
he kept the body all that time. A freezer big enough to hold a man would have to have left some kind of mark on the floor of his
rented garage in North Bergen, but the police found no hard evidence that a unit that large had ever been there. The refrigerated lockers inside Mr. Softee’s ice-cream truck would have been big enough to hold a body with room to spare, but when asked about all this, Richard Kuklinski just smiles.

Richard Kuklinski claims that one of his favorite weapons was the compact derringer pistol and that he carried two when he was fully armed. But no derringers were found when his house and cars were searched. He says that he had been carrying a one-shot firearm shaped like a fountain pen in his shirt pocket when he was arrested. It was lost in the scuffle at his arrest, he says.

International currency exchange was Richard Kuklinski’s supposed legitimate business, but many questions remain unanswered on that aspect of his life. He claims to have made a great deal of money selling Nigerian currency at a discount to American companies that had factories in that country. He has implied that he had obtained the Nigerian money through arms deals. But how would he have made a profit if he had to sell the currency at a discount in order to get American dollars? Were these arms deals deadly rip-off scams like the one he had planned for Dominick Polifrone in which the weapons never actually existed?

Only Richard Kuklinski knows.

The hunting knife that he kept in his briefcase had ten notches on the handle. He claims to have killed with knives, but none of the murders that the police have connected to him were stabbings. Who were
these
victims?

Only Richard Kuklinski knows.

The locked box may open up someday, but until then we can only speculate on what else is in there. Only Richard Kuklinski knows for sure.

Judge Kuechenmeister has observed that most of the convicted criminals who face sentencing in his courtroom seem impassive and even relieved when their punishment is handed down. The
average offender cannot structure a life for himself, and so he falls into a life of crime. Prison will provide a structure that these criminals have never had, and in that sense they are relieved of the burden of having to figure out what to do with themselves every day, day after day.

Criminals like Richard Kuklinski are the exception. They have structured their lives. This is why Kuklinski was so hard to catch. He was careful, he was methodical, and he was disciplined. He knew how to separate the various aspects of his life, and he tried not to let his emotions overtake his “business” decisions. But it is this ability to structure a life that has made prison so difficult for him. He doesn’t like other people telling him what to do and when to do it. Looking back on the morning of his arrest, he often wishes that he had died in a shoot-out with the police. If his wife had not been in the car with him, he says there definitely would have been some bloodshed.

Richard Kuklinski now works in the prison library and keeps to himself as much as possible. His brother, Joseph, is imprisoned at the Trenton State Hospital in a ward for the criminally insane, two miles from the Trenton State Prison. The brothers have not seen each other in more than twenty years, and Richard has no interest in reestablishing communication.

Kuklinski has made no friends in prison, only acquaintances. At one point convicted murderer John List tried to win his friendship. List is the New Jersey man who killed his wife, children, and mother in a bizarre ritual, then fled to Virginia and created a new life for himself, which he maintained for fourteen years before he was caught. But Richard Kuklinski wants no part of List. To him, anyone who would harm his own family is beneath contempt. He has said repeatedly that the only friend he has ever had and ever will have is his wife, Barbara.

Barbara Kuklinski says she remained in this destructive relationship that fluctuated between extreme abuse and extreme abundance because she deeply feared that her husband would have
turned his rage on their children if she had ever tried to leave him. Besides, she says, the notion of “just walking out the door” is a simpleminded solution offered by people who don’t know the half of it. Barbara Kuklinski compares herself with Hedda Nussbaum, the woman who lived with Joel Steinberg, the abusive, drug-addicted New York lawyer who was convicted in the beating death of his adopted daughter, Lisa Steinberg. That trial was televised, and Ms. Nussbaum’s battered face, her vague, hoarse voice, and her obvious internal scarring riveted audiences all through her testimony. Seeing what her mate had done to her, people winced and asked why in God’s name Nussbaum hadn’t just left that monster. Barbara Kuklinski says she knows why. An outsider can never begin to understand what a woman goes through in that kind of relationship. It makes no sense, she says, unless you’re there.

The house on Sunset Street was sold, and Barbara Kuklinski no longer lives in Dumont. Both her daughters are married, and her son lives on his own, but the family remains close. Barbara Kuklinski’s main concern now is keeping her children and grandchildren from being branded as the Iceman’s family, but she sometimes doubts that that stigma will ever heal.

Bob Carroll, Bobby Buccino, Ron Donahue, and Paul Smith still work together, making cases for the New Jersey State task force. Over the years their combined efforts have brought thousands of criminals to justice, yet Operation Iceman remains by far their most memorable case.

Dominick Polifrone is now resident agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms office in Fairfield, New Jersey. He still lives in the same house in northern Bergen County with his family, and he still likes to unwind on his deck with a cigar and a glass of scotch. But he has yet to relive the tension he experienced during his prolonged undercover assignment with the Iceman.

To this day Richard Kuklinski has expressed no remorse for the
lives he has taken. He insists that his victims were all “players,” and they got what they deserved.

The only thing he regrets is the pain and suffering he has caused his family. When he thinks about them and the life they once had together, the Iceman sometimes cries.

All the people depicted in this book are real with two exceptions: “Captain Brealy” is a composite character representing several individuals who had little faith in Special Agent Dominick Polifrone’s chances of getting close to Richard Kuklinski, the Iceman; “Mr. Butterfield” is a fictitious character created to illustrate Kuklinski’s negative feelings for his neighbors in the Jersey City housing projects.

Richard Kuklinski would not reveal the name of his first victim, so I have called him Johnny.

The identities of some individuals have been changed for their own protection.

The dialogue presented in this book is based on the actual undercover tapes that were used to convict Richard Kuklinski, the trial transcripts, or the recollections of the people involved.

In writing this book, I was extremely fortunate to have been given a generous amount of support and cooperation from a variety of people who all deserve recognition for their efforts.

First, I would like to thank Jim Thebaut, who brought this project to me and whose seventeen-hour videotaped interview with Richard Kuklinski provided a unique look into the mind of a killer.

Thanks to John Mumford of the Juniata College Library, Fred Ney of the
Wilkes-Barre Sunday Independent
, and Marilyn Thomas of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library at Auburn University for helping me with my research; and to Superintendent Howard Beyer for facilitating my visit to Trenton State Prison to interview Richard Kuklinski. I would also like to thank Donna Kocubinski of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice, whose helpfulness is surpassed only by her patience.

I am grateful to all those who gave me their time in order to be interviewed for this book: Dr. Michael M. Baden, director of the Forensic Sciences Unit of the New York State Police; Dr. Geetha Natarajan, assistant New Jersey state medical examiner; Dr. Frederick Zugibe,
Rockland County chief medical examiner; and Dr. Michael Schwartzman, Ph.D.;

Former Attorney General for the State of New Jersey W. Cary Edwards; Director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice Robert T. Winter; Deputy Chief Robert T. Buccino, Investigator Ron Donahue, and the late Investigator Ronald Jivins of the New Jersey Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau; Deputy Attorney General Charles E. Waldron;

The Honorable Frederick W. Kuechenmeister;

Lieutenant Ernest Volkman and Detective-Sergeant Pat Kane of the New Jersey State Police;

Deputy Chief Ed Denning and Lieutenant Alan Grieco of the Bergen County Prosecutors Office;

Deputy Chief Margaret Moore and Special Agent Ray Goger of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms;

Neal M. Frank, Barbara Kuklinski, and Richard Kuklinski.

Special thanks to the guys from the “A-Team” whose enthusiasm for this project and willingness to provide me with information made them a writer’s dream: Deputy Attorney General Bob Carroll, Supervising State Investigator Paul Smith, and ATF Resident Agent in Charge Dominick Polifrone.

And as always, I am eternally indebted to the people who turn my manuscripts into books: my editors, Brian DeFiore and Mitch Horowitz; my agent, Al Zuckerman of Writers House; and my wife, Judith Sachs, who reads and critiques them first (and who also endures more tales of murder and mayhem at the dinner table than any spouse should).

A
NTHONY
B
RUNO
is the author of eleven crime novels and four true-crime books, including
Seven
(based on the hit movie starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman). His nonfiction work,
The Seekers: A Bounty Hunter’s Story
, was nominated for the Edgar Award for best fact-crime book. His novel
Bad Apple
was adapted for television in 2004.