Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 328: Richard Kuklinski Part III - The Fall of the Iceman

Episode Date: August 17, 2018

On the conclusion to our series on Richard Kuklinski, we cover his love affair with cyanide, his bizarre friendship with fellow psychopathic hitman Robert Prongay, and the B&E crew that eventually bro...ught Richard down. Add Honey to your browser for free at http://joinhoney.com/last If you have a second, please do us a solid by filling out this confidential survey: https://bit.ly/2L1A1Uv 

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, what's up everyone? How are you? Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks. Hi, hi. So exciting news. We're getting some, what do we call it? Advertising, right? Not products. Not products. But we are going to get some advertising and in order to help us out, it would be awesome if you could click the link in the description of this episode, fill out a little survey so we know what we, so we know what you want so the advertisements can actually be worthwhile and not drive you completely insane.
Starting point is 00:00:26 And the information is confidential. We don't take emails or names or anything. You're not going to get any kind of weird list or anything like that. It just helps us out. Awesome. Thank you all so much. Hail yourselves and enjoy this episode. There's no place to escape to. This is the last time. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that?
Starting point is 00:00:55 Oh, Mark. Oh, hi. Oh, I'm so glad you decided to come back to the club. I was so rude the last time. It's okay. I like it here. Oh, so rude. It's nice. Did you have some granoles? I had a lot of granoles. What are you doing? Oh, who is this huge compatriot of yours, Mr. Mark?
Starting point is 00:01:16 That's Ben. Oh, he decided to bring in this gavone in here without an introduction. The hell's a gavone? You. It's something like you. Okay, if you want to be in the club, it's nice to have you both again here. Let me see them feet. Oh, my God. All right, we can't go down. Just a lonely Godfather.
Starting point is 00:01:36 I understand. All right, this is the last podcast on the left, everyone. I'm a lonely Godfather. I don't know why you want to look at our feet. I have horrible toes, horrible toes. One thing I could tell is that you got big feet knuckles. Yeah. And if you could just imagine putting little nipples in each one of them,
Starting point is 00:01:53 it's like you got two and one breast, two pairs and one singular breast. You want to put a nipple on my toes? Yeah, I know my toes look like they can hold a baseball bat, but we don't put nipples on everything. I am Ben Kitzel with Odd Looking Toes and Marcus Parks. Normal looking toes, odd looking hands. Oh, very much so. And then we have Henry Zabrowski just pick something and most likely it's odd.
Starting point is 00:02:17 I've never seen your feet. No, I never show my feet and never show my legs. I've I just started showing my arms here in my year of 37 because I really found I found my own inner brave and that's what I'm doing. Yeah, I've seen your legs there. I mean, they are as expected. They are large, but it's not bad. It's not a significant thing.
Starting point is 00:02:35 You don't look like you have L. Infantitis. You don't look like the six hundred pound man. You just got big ankles. You got big. You got a lot of meat. Yeah, and a lot of varicose veins, which is always normal for a healthy boy. But I've not seen your feet. No, you're never going to see him.
Starting point is 00:02:49 I really want to see him now. You're never going to see him. I had a toe surgery to get out of playing football. We're not going to go into it. Oh, did you? What? No, we're not going into it. We got a lot to get to today.
Starting point is 00:03:00 We're at Richard Kuklinski part three. A lot of things are happening and they're all disgusting. Oh, yeah. So by the mid seventies, Richard's star was on the rise in the mafia contract Killin' World, and his reluctant buddy, Roy DeMeo, was on his way to becoming something even more than that. However, Richard was still planning on killing him.
Starting point is 00:03:23 As if the pistol weapon when they first met wasn't bad enough, DeMeo had also pulled an oozy on Richard in front of the guys, then followed it up with the age old, I'm only fucking with your routine, employed by Dick Heads the World Round. Ah. But his was particularly insane,
Starting point is 00:03:41 because you had all of the psychopaths of the murder machine at a table. They invited Richie over, which they never do, because Richie does not mix well. And so they're having a spaghetti, they're having some garlic bread, they're having some regote, and then all of a sudden, it's like fucking from the Intouchables.
Starting point is 00:03:59 And I think he did it because of the movie Intouchables, or I don't know if it happened before or after, but Roy DeMeo goes to a palette, opens up, and he pulls out this oozy. And he's just like, hey, guys, check out my oozy, it's nice, oh, yo, yo, yo, and he puts it down by his crotch, and starts hopping everyone's,
Starting point is 00:04:15 and says, hey, good one, good one, Roy. And then he's like, he clicks it, and he puts it in Richie's face, he's like, what are you gonna do about it, Richie? We think maybe you've been talking, Richie. And everyone's, the room goes silent, and then he goes, just fucking with that, and they're like, ha, ha, ha, ha, good one, Roy, good one.
Starting point is 00:04:34 Yeah. Richie gets very upset. I could imagine, I could see the bit working, if Steve Martin did it right after he had the fake arrow through his head, right after he does King Tut, then go get the oozy and be like, you're laughing at me, you're laughing at me, then perhaps it could work out.
Starting point is 00:04:54 Yeah, because he's just a wild and crazy guy. He's a wild and crazy guy, and now he has an oozy, that's kind of fun. If he opens his new masterclass on comedy, which we should take, I'm actually kind of upset that we didn't even, we were even doing this episode without taking it. Do we not go to Clown College?
Starting point is 00:05:09 Oh man. It's Clune Kulash. I'm sorry. But, Richard still needed Dimeo, and events were about to transpire that would make Roy that much harder to kill. In 1976, mob boss, Carlo Gambino, died of natural causes. Oh.
Starting point is 00:05:28 So he's not, he didn't find like the green lantern ring, and that made it more difficult to kill. It's something more of this world, okay. Yes, yes. Because Gambino was a family first guy, he appointed his brother-in-law, Paul Castellano, as his successor before he died. Carlo Gambino was like, was old school.
Starting point is 00:05:50 He dressed it like an old Sicilian, like peasant, and he wore those little flat hats. I don't know where those Italian men get those hats that are essentially rags with like sturdy little rings on them, and they're always holding them in their hands, like they're about to collect porridge from an orphanage, like, I don't know, catering person. I don't know what the term is.
Starting point is 00:06:08 I guess chef. Like you go around and it's like, but he always had like a floppy little hat on. It was like, he's like the vision of the actual godfather. But then he made Paul Castellano with no business being a godfather, the cop of the duty. Yeah, because Gambino, like he'd built
Starting point is 00:06:23 this huge criminal empire. Like it was one of the most successful organized crime organizations in history. Right. Castellano was just an absolute fucking moron when it came to the ins and outs of mafia life. Now, how many soup bowl hats did they sell? Was that the bowl with the ring during?
Starting point is 00:06:41 Guess what? Because when you're a made man, they are given. It is a privilege to have the soup bowl hat, because only a soup bowl hat can both be a handkerchief in order to wop up blood or spit that comes from a godfather's mouth or the thing to wipe up extra sauce. I love it. Make sure you finish the soup before you wear it as a hat.
Starting point is 00:07:00 That will get, that will be messy. That would be the living end. Well, here's just a couple of Paul Castellano's fuck ups. First, he held mandatory weekly meetings at a place in Bensonhurst called the Veterans and Friends Social Club, which is now the parking lot of an outback steakhouse. Because of this, the FBI was able to track
Starting point is 00:07:27 each and every Gambino family lieutenant. They were all in one place every week at the same time. So all the FBI had to do is just sit and look, see who was coming in and who was coming out. And so for long, they had this whole list of all the people involved in this criminal enterprise. I mean, to be fair, the cops could have also just gone to a New York Jets bar every single Sunday
Starting point is 00:07:47 when the Jets are playing. And then nine out of 10, part of the family. Do you guys remember back in 2011, this was very similar to something that happened back then. Remember that place over on Graham Avenue, Graham Avenue meats and delis that had that awesome fucking Godfather sandwich? Except for every time you ate it,
Starting point is 00:08:02 you did get food poisoning. Yes, but it tasted fantastic. Yes. Back in 2011, that place got raided because it was run by a guy that was part of the Bonanno family. And that dude had a Rolodex with the name, address, phone number, job, and alias of every mob guy left in New York City.
Starting point is 00:08:25 And a couple of sandwich recipes. Don't forget about that. I actually got a sandwich from there one time, and I was too afraid to tell him, like, could you please put on gloves? He had just received money from another patron. Just went right into the meats, and I was like, I'm going to get sick.
Starting point is 00:08:38 I still ate it, hence the food poisoning. I remember the guy. I did the same thing. I got the Godfather because you'd read about it. I was like, oh, I got it. It's a sandwich. It is six inches wide. It was huge.
Starting point is 00:08:48 It was so good. I got him crazy sick after eating it. The guy literally was just like, let me guess. You want a Godfather? And I was like, yeah, man. He's like, OK. Coughed through his hands, then rubbed it into his hair that was filled with grease, and then made the sandwich.
Starting point is 00:09:06 And the whole time, I'm like, New York, huh? Yeah, it was like this was very authentic. Yeah, right down the street from the Blue Stove where I used to work, which was also a former mob hangout, which was across the street from the printer and fax machine that was still, quote unquote, in business up until like 2015. And swish, swish, swish, swish,
Starting point is 00:09:26 quotation marks in business. I heard that Kuklinski killed somebody on Graham Avenue as well. I guarantee you he did at one point, yeah. And it's also near a great store called The Meat Hook if you are in the meat, if you are. They're big fans of the show, and they were wonderful steaks. Oh, why not?
Starting point is 00:09:38 Seriously, The Meat Hook's the fan of the show? Yeah, big fan. Go get some steaks. I will. I will. Good Lord. Well, the other mistake that Paul Casolano made was that he refused to sweep his house for bugs.
Starting point is 00:09:52 So the FBI had pretty much an ear in every room in his house. They heard everything, including the illicit affair he had with his housekeeper. Uh-oh. Mr. Castellano, it's so nice to work for you again. Yes, I couldn't help but notice my cannoli needs to be clean. Oh, yes.
Starting point is 00:10:12 The cannoli is very filled with dust, isn't it, Mr. Castellano? Yes. Much dusty it is. Much dusty it needs not to be. I don't know. I don't like this mafia romance going on here. Well, the audio of that particular trist got leaked to the papers, and the mafia was humiliated.
Starting point is 00:10:33 And there's nothing these big fat dumb losers of the mafia hate more than to be humiliated. They get really, really upset. And he's too proud. These guys, I'm so sick of mafia, guys. Now at the end of this, where it's like, you're all too proud to check your house for bugs, don't be proud, get the job done.
Starting point is 00:10:49 Yeah, get a Roomba on that, I would say. What's the name of this dusty or dirty dong, it does wrong? I don't want to hear about a mafia affair. I just don't want to hear about it. Arnold Schwarzenegger, I could hear about that affair because you picture Arnold, I mean, very attractive. You know, and you're like, OK, I can visualize this. But a mafia guy, all my forks everywhere.
Starting point is 00:11:11 It doesn't sound fun. Mafia sex, I imagine a copo's sex is about four minutes long, tops. It's like, uh, uh, uh, uh, go on. And then that's it. I suppose so, short book. And those are just the big fuck ups that Paul Castellano involved himself in.
Starting point is 00:11:29 One of the smaller ones was given one of the biggest psychopaths in his organization what he'd wanted since he was a child. He made Roy DeMeo a made man. And now I'd like to give the audience a preview of what it's like to have been in Bensonhurst in 1977. This is a reading from the Iceman by Philip Carlo. It was the spring of 1977, a time of rebirth and renewal,
Starting point is 00:11:57 the end of the bitterly cold East Coast winter. All over Bensonhurst's quiet, tree-lined streets and avenues, this unassuming place with the world's greatest concentration of serial murderers. Green leaves and grass on small lawns returned. Birds chirped, flowers bloomed, the sun shone. Kids returned to the streets and played
Starting point is 00:12:19 boisterous games, a stick ball with cut down broomsticks, Johnny on the pony, and cork cork ring of a levio. Young girls jumped rope, except for the mob rubouts that occasionally occurred there. Bensonhurst was a safe place, a good place to bring up children, okay for women and girls to walk about without worry. And for De Mayo, this was like receiving a doctorate
Starting point is 00:12:43 after a lifetime of earnest study. It was the highlight of his life, what he had always wanted, a dream come true. As is the mandated custom, word went out to every maid man and all the families that roared De Mayo was being straightened out. If anyone knew something about De Mayo that was reason for him not to be made,
Starting point is 00:13:03 they had to speak up and let the Gambino people know. No one spoke against De Mayo's induction. But back at the Gemini Lounge, that evening there was another celebration. All De Mayo's people were there. Bottles of expensive champagne were opened and numerous toasts were made. Glistening piles of cocaine were on the kitchen table
Starting point is 00:13:21 for anyone who wanted to partake. Some loose women were brought in to entertain, put on a Conalinga show, performed virtuoso blowjobs. AIDS was not an issue yet, and the women happily swallowed all. Boy considered himself quite the ladies man. Did not get along with his wife was always horny. And tonight he got a double header.
Starting point is 00:13:43 Two women sucking and licking his penis and testicles at the same time. A double suck, as the crew called it, life was good. Wow, that is like Norman Rockwell meets a film by Toby Hooper with a little Scorsese and I guess a little bit of that Playboy guy in there. What's his name? Hugh Hefner.
Starting point is 00:14:05 Hugh Hefner, of course. My goodness. Virtuoso blowjob is definitely a creation of Philip Carlo. Yes, for sure. Mounds of cocaine. I don't know what any of this shit is because you also imagine Roy DeMeo because at this point it's funny to call them DeMeo
Starting point is 00:14:19 and they put the word Meo in there and they're all laughing about it. Sure. And then can you just imagine all the mobsters, because you know how it is, the two girls come out and then they just go silent, watching your boss get his dick sucked in his ball slicks by these two women that you just knew
Starting point is 00:14:35 was Barbara and Rayya down from the paperclip factory. I don't know where you find these people. Yeah, I don't know, yeah. All right, well, I guess it's strange day at the office. Well, the reason why make and Roy DeMeo made man was such a bad idea was because DeMeo and his crew of killers were starting to fall apart. The murder machines have been killing almost indiscriminately,
Starting point is 00:14:57 sometimes two people a day and it was all fueled by cocaine. Oh my goodness. But erratic as they were, their actions, particularly the shark incident we mentioned at the end of the last episode were an inspiration to Richard Kuklinski. Disposal had always been a problem for Richard so he decided to work smarter, not harder.
Starting point is 00:15:20 And I found out the name of the book I was talking about last time. I had many people tell me, it's called What Color Is Your Parachute? And I was reading it about business matters, right? About how Richard learned about how to do business, right? And the book doesn't really say anything about parachutes, which is confusing.
Starting point is 00:15:37 But I think that if he had a color parachute at this point, it would be brown. Yeah, it could be. So he's like, remember that scene in the first Batman film, Adam West? He's got the bomb and he doesn't know what to do with it. There's a nun there, oh my god, there's a nun. He's throwing at the nun,
Starting point is 00:15:53 although the recent Catholic church scandals, I say maybe just throw at him, that's the one other story. Yeah, kill the nun, kill the nun, kill the nun. But then he saw the ducks. Kill the nun, always kill the nun. But Kuklinski was doing that with a human head. He was just running around like, I can't throw at the ducks, I don't like ducks.
Starting point is 00:16:07 Okay. So Richard started looking into the one assassin's tool that he hadn't tried yet, poison. Oh, see a poison is done just right. It can be indistinguishable from a heart attack unless the coroner knows to specifically look for poison. So Richard casually asked his friend, Phil Salamene, if he had a hookup.
Starting point is 00:16:31 And turned out, Phil did in the form of a fat little pharmacist named Paul Hoffman. And the poison Hoffman had in spades. Let me guess, he goes there, Paul Hoffman hands him the Godfather sandwich from Graham Avenue Deli. He's like, have a meat this, they will die in within three hours. They eat this in three hours from now,
Starting point is 00:16:52 your friend of a certain name will be swimming with the dookies. Yeah. Cyanide. Oh, cyanide. All right. And it seemed like Phil was a sociopath on the level with all the rest of them because he actually sat down with Richard
Starting point is 00:17:11 and showed him the exact amounts to use to find that middle ground between getting away with murder and alarm raising overkill. Ooh, all right. I mean, do they go and do they make then, do they make hand turkeys? Like, do they sit in, is this like arts and crafts day at camp where they all sit and they measure up poison?
Starting point is 00:17:30 Cause I know that they fed some to some animals and it's like, oh look, you can see how it killed that dog. And Richie's like, this is the best afternoon. I've had in a long time. Oh no, that's crazy. So he's going the Kim Jong-un route when it came to taking out his brother. Oh yeah, Richard said one of the first guys
Starting point is 00:17:48 to fall victim to his new technique was a Bonanno family lieutenant named Tommy Scavelli, aka Dapper. Ooh. Man, you can tell when Richard tells this story, like this is a particularly fun memory for him. Okay. He smiles a lot during the story.
Starting point is 00:18:07 He doesn't smile a lot, but he just goes like, huh, like he just like remembers it. It's a fun time for him. Okay. So Dapper was a paranoid guy and with good reason because after all people were trying to kill him. Seems like it, yeah. So everywhere he went, there were two bodyguards
Starting point is 00:18:22 right by his side. Everywhere that is, except the disco dance floor. Ooh. Yeah, cause that would make you gay. Dancing with these guys out there. They just can't keep up with his moves. And that was where Richard would strike. Okay.
Starting point is 00:18:37 The setting was Xenon. Xenon was a hip Manhattan disco that was Studio 54's only competition. Oh. So it was the Hydrox of clubs. I don't know, there was play, I mean, it was Andy Warhol's preferred spot. It was O.J. Simpson's preferred spot.
Starting point is 00:18:53 Okay. Remember Andy Warhol did a painting of O.J. Simpson once, so you know. Let's not forget that. Let's not, look at him, I'm actually like, it hurts my mind just thinking about the two of them. Oh my God, yeah, I would prefer this place too. I'm not a Studio 54 guy.
Starting point is 00:19:11 No. Because I can just see them rejecting me. Oh yeah. I can see me walking up, them laughing at me publicly, and then a bunch of models of both male and female looking at me and poking at my stomach and saying, good work on losing all the weight.
Starting point is 00:19:24 Now get out of here, you're still fat. No, Kissel, you're actually, you're thinking negatively about it, it's opposite. If you went to Studio 54, you would have been accepted. Why? It would like go in a limelight, because they collect all different types of people
Starting point is 00:19:36 and you're one kind of person. Yes, that maybe you would have been known as like the Bigfoot, but you would have danced all night. No, they put me in monster corner and then I don't get anything but, well, I'll take some beers. Amen, you and Richard Kuklinski are pretty much the same size
Starting point is 00:19:51 and they let Kuklinski in. But not to Studio 54. To Xenon. To Xenon. But Xenon was just as good. I'd go to Xenon. So when Richard went to Xenon to do a little better recon, he noticed there were a couple of gay dudes there.
Starting point is 00:20:04 Okay. And he said no one was paying attention to the gay men. So instead of realizing that he was at a disco in 1978 and nobody there like gave a fuck if the dudes were gay or not, Richard got it in his head that the only reason why people weren't gawking was because people purposely ignore gay men. There's an old Native American saying about it,
Starting point is 00:20:27 right about, he who sucks dick, the smoke does not touch. Interesting. All right, so he's got something. He's got some very Polish mafia thoughts going on here. He's a Polish idea. Okay, so Richard got an idea. Did he like bring mirrors around him? Like maybe they're invisible.
Starting point is 00:20:46 If I put a mirror next to them and they don't see themselves, then they're vampires, which are also kind of gay. Okay. His plan was to dress up as his version of a gay person. Oh no. Although he is very careful to let you know he's not saying anything bad about gay people whatsoever. This is fucking bug's body.
Starting point is 00:21:04 This is what he learned from all those cartoons. This is what he learned? Wow. This is what he learned. Because in his mind, like a 300 pound gay man was unreasonable. Unreasonable. He was older than.
Starting point is 00:21:16 It does not happen. So Richard figured he had to go over the top to really show everyone that he was a gay person. Oh my God. So he walked in on his butt, which was very, very difficult. And Richard, that meant pink pants, a canary yellow vest, a big red hat
Starting point is 00:21:39 and platform shoes. Man, I wanna see this so bad. You can see the scene. It's like, the doors open, you hear Blondie playing over the disco sounds going through. No, no, no, that was a gas. Gonna find out, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He comes walking in, everyone's like, who's that guy?
Starting point is 00:22:03 Who's that guy? He's like in Spider-Man 3, I think when he's doing the dance sequence, he's like walking through, spinning around, huge thing, and like I honestly think there's a part of him that was so free this night that he wished that he could get back to this point. This true happiness.
Starting point is 00:22:22 I swear to you RoboCop could have walked in and less people would have paid attention. Well according to Richard, it worked. No one was paying attention to him. Oh really? They weren't staring at the, oh good Lord, this is amazing. This is where we need Jeffrey Dobrik.
Starting point is 00:22:39 Dobrik was the only one that could have taken him down. So once Richard saw his target, he danced across the floor in a manner that he described as swishy and bumped into the guy. And that is when Richard took out the hypodermic needle that he'd filled with cyanide and pricked the guy with it. Yeah, he gave him the hotshot, that's what he called it.
Starting point is 00:23:03 Dude was dead within minutes and the final word at the medical examiner's office was that Tony Dapper Scavelli died of a heart attack at the disco. Wow. And with this, Richard discovered efficiency. Oh, not his love of dressing like that? I think that he did and I think,
Starting point is 00:23:23 well he always dressed very extravagantly. He did that when he was younger too. And so there was a part of him, Richard Kuklinski is full of himself. Yes. There was a lot of it where he has a massive ego and a part of it has to do with, I think probably killing close to 100 people.
Starting point is 00:23:38 Oh my goodness. But in doing that, he definitely believed he was smarter and better than everybody else. And there was a part of him that I think that when he put that outfit on, a part of it's like, I make this look good. He did a rescue. And he knew that this is what I'm supposed to do.
Starting point is 00:23:54 I'm a chameleon, I'm the world's ultimate predator. I could do this and I look good while I do it. Okay, interesting story. So Richard got into the whole poison game so much that he started checking out books on poison and he'd studied them religiously. He started putting cyanide in food and drinks, just spilling it on people.
Starting point is 00:24:17 And the more hits he pulled off, the more work he got. So he had to do like, like mime work to fake, oh my, oh my. Well yeah, you remember he went to the improv works. He learned that beforehand when he created the whole suicide section, when he faked that guy's suicide, he knows how to set a play. I guess he does, improv everywhere.
Starting point is 00:24:41 And Richard was making so much money that he was able to rent his own office space on Spring and Lafayette in Soho. I mean, this is back when, you know, Spring and Lafayette, Soho was a shithole. Right, right, right. It wasn't as nice as it is now. Right.
Starting point is 00:24:55 Yeah, cause this is like, it's like a block away from where the MoMA store is now. There was no MoMA store back when Sunset Inc. was in business. Okay. This is where the foot clan lived. Ooh, love them. Yeah, and this is the place where Richard could run his burgeoning business from murder contracts
Starting point is 00:25:11 to simple breaking and entering jobs. But just because Richard was become an organized and professional didn't mean that everyone else had. Case in point was a burglary gig Richard had pulled off with a crew of five other guys. The heist itself, which involved a bunch of coins and stamps stolen from the house of a wealthy businessman in Montclair had gone off without a hitch.
Starting point is 00:25:35 Okay. It was only when it came time to split the loot that there was trouble. And it all started with Ralphie the Snake. This is even a problem when you hire a man with the name Ralphie the Snake. If you read what color is your parachute, you know for a fact that a part of the way you need
Starting point is 00:25:50 to set up your career is about presentation. And if you want to just, you should probably say, Ralphie the trustworthy dog. Right. You sell yourself. And then afterwards you could say it, but actually my nickname is Ralphie the Snake. And everyone's like, oh, that's why you have
Starting point is 00:26:07 all the snake tattoos and none of the dog tattoos. Yeah, it definitely sounds like that. South are the Simpsons villain. Oh yeah, snake. Snake, yeah, absolutely. So when they were talking about like, oh, how do we divide up all of the money? They had a difficult time cutting the coins in half.
Starting point is 00:26:22 Was that the problem? No, they got a hedgehog. Yeah, they got a fensim. They got a fensim. I see. You got to take everything to a fence and then you split the take. But Ralphie the Snake, he figured that some of them
Starting point is 00:26:33 had taken bigger risks than others. So because like, for example, like Richard, his job was to like sit, just sit there in case the businessman came back. And then if the businessman came back, then Richard's job was to kill the businessman. So technically Richard didn't do anything. So Ralphie the Snake figured he should get
Starting point is 00:26:49 more money than Richard. That's not how heists work. No. You don't prorate a heist. All heists, it has to be, and that's what Richard was, and this is where I stand with Richard. It's six equal cuts. That's how it goes.
Starting point is 00:27:01 It has to be equal. Well, everybody, some of the guys thought, yeah, we should get more money and some of the guys thought we should all get an equal cut. And the thing was that it wasn't necessarily the cut that annoyed Richard. What annoyed Richard was the fact that they were all arguing about it.
Starting point is 00:27:16 Yeah, it's like we go out to a bunch of eat with a bunch of your friends, right? And then everyone's going through the fucking the check. And being like, well, actually, you had two beers and I had one beer, and I'll just be like, what are we doing here? What is this? This is an accounting festival?
Starting point is 00:27:31 All right, no, this is dinner. Everybody just pays. You either pay half of it or you don't. Yeah, well, I think they made a massive mistake on this heist. At no point did they hire Brad Pitt nor George Clooney. Everyone knows those are the only two people who can pull this off.
Starting point is 00:27:44 No, those two guys were fucking the liabilities. The guy that was the key member of that was Jet Lee, that always should have technically gotten a bitter cut at all the rest of them because he was the only one that could fit into the fall. All right, Jet Lee is the snake of the ocean's aid or whatever. So Richard, instead of showing just an inkling of patience,
Starting point is 00:28:04 said that he will go out and get sandwiches for everyone. Hey, I'm going to go get a sandwich. You guys want a sandwich? Everyone's like, yeah! Yeah, Richie, you've never been nice before. You've been sitting here silently. You basically said three times how you wish you could kill us all.
Starting point is 00:28:18 We all thought, you thought that you were being silent about it, but you literally can't think silently. And he's just like, yeah, I guess I'm not really a nice guy all the time, huh? But this time, I will be. You're like, oh, OK. So Richard said that he went out, got a bunch of sandwiches for everyone,
Starting point is 00:28:36 and got back in his car and pulled out his rubber gloves, opened up the sandwiches, and just sprinkled a little bit of cyanide on each one. And of course, he learned this by watching Dumb and Dumber because that is how this killed their main nemesis or one of their main nemesis and that. So he took them back in, and everyone's still arguing. They start eating their sandwiches.
Starting point is 00:28:57 But one by one, they just start dropping. So when the first person drops, how many more bites does the next person take before they drop? I think in standard heist mentality, you're looking at that guy, and you're like, one less cut to go around. This sandwich is really good. And then the fourth guy's like, ha, ha, ha.
Starting point is 00:29:21 These guys must be allergic to ham. Good work, Richie. After all of them were dead, Richard cleaned up, took the loot, and left. Then the next day, he poisoned the insurance agent who turned him on to the job at a bar just for good measure, because it was going to be a half and half split. But Richard's like, I want all of it.
Starting point is 00:29:44 So he sprinkled a little bit of cyanide in the guy's beer, and he killed over at the bar as well. So he's into it. He is into this cyanide poisoning. He's loving it. OK. He's loving it. This is his favorite.
Starting point is 00:29:55 It's like when you get a really good new horror shirt, and you end up wearing it like five days in a row. Right, right. Now, Richard was, of course, a talented hitman. But that didn't mean he was the only game in town outside of the Dimeo crew. Richard was about to meet a kindred spirit named Robert Prongay.
Starting point is 00:30:18 Robert Prongay is my favorite. Yeah. Now, Robert Prongay is an interesting character, because most of what we know about him is from what Richard told us. However, we do know he existed. And we do know he was a criminal. And some of what Richard told us about him
Starting point is 00:30:37 is concretely backed up by a newspaper article found by the diligent research of the invaluable assistant, Annie. And you know, for a fact, Marcus is telling the truth, because he hit his, yes, the pitch of truth. So that is happening. And we'll get into all that later. OK. But what's a little fuzzy are the details.
Starting point is 00:31:01 And unfortunately, Richard's story is about all we have to go on concerning that. So Richard said his first meeting with Robert Prongay was nothing more than happenstance. Richard was stalking out a hotel on the lookout for a mark when he ran into a shifty-looking little guy with bushy eyebrows in the elevator. The guy gave off hitman vibes, but Richard brushed it off.
Starting point is 00:31:26 I love his description. They walk in because he's casing. Because he does this like, he does this very like, I'm a nondescript huge man. Just a nondescript huge man who could walk like a cat. Walks like a cat everywhere he goes, like a shadow he moves. And then he sees another guy walk doing the same thing, these bushy eyebrows, tiny little guy like my size,
Starting point is 00:31:51 walking and doing the same shit and like, nondescript bushy eyebrowed man. Just walking through a hallway, moving like a squirrel. Absolutely deft and quick and edgy, moving like a squirrel. And then they go into the elevator together and they sniff each other out. They're both like, hmm, rubber shoes, bulky pockets, hmm. Very interesting.
Starting point is 00:32:17 So he just brushed that first meeting off. But a couple hours later, they ran into each other again in the hotel bathroom. Oh, and this isn't good. And this led to the most competitive game of sorts ever to be played on this planet Earth. They must have peed for three solid minutes. Because the way Richard, the way it kind of plays out, right,
Starting point is 00:32:39 is that Richard rolls up to the urinal, bushy eyebrow man comes in next to the urinal, the urinal next to him, right, and they're eyeing each other. He's like, how you doing? I'm doing good. How you doing? You here on business? Yeah, I'm here on business.
Starting point is 00:33:02 Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, a little bit of business, you'd think. Some people go on business for a long time. Some people for a short time. You here for my business? Are you here for my business? Is your business my business? There's lots of different businesses
Starting point is 00:33:22 that I'm not sure if my business and your business is the same. Businesses, businesses, business is good. Business can be good, as of late it has been. Sometimes it hasn't been. But today it's good. So business. Business can be shared.
Starting point is 00:33:43 Good thing they're wearing rubber shoes because they are pissing all over each other's feet at this point. They are having a long conversation, basically trying to figure out if one's trying to kill the other. Yeah, and trying to see if they were somehow put on the same job.
Starting point is 00:33:57 Like they just kept going back and forth. It was like, you hear from me? No, good. Oh my god. No, OK, good, fine. Good, good, good, fine, fine. Oh, so you're not here for me? No, no way, I'll never be here for you.
Starting point is 00:34:10 Yeah? Yeah, well, if you're here for me, it would be nice to know about it if a little bit of pre-warning if you could possibly give me some. I wouldn't do it if I did, but I don't think you're marking all because you're too big. It's a comedy of errors, hitman style.
Starting point is 00:34:23 Turns out they were at the hotel on two completely different jobs. Oh my god. Mondays. Wow, all right. And so what is it? They said, good luck in parted ways. Yeah, good luck to you and to you, sir.
Starting point is 00:34:38 Yeah, there's two guys in the bar. It's been like, no luck to either of you, please. A few days later, though, Richard was sitting in a van outside the same hotel when he heard this noise behind him. Ice cream. Wait a second. I love ice cream.
Starting point is 00:35:04 So the ice cream man has arrived. So when Richard heard the chimes, he got out of his car and huffed it to the ice cream truck for a soda. And who should be sitting there dressed in full Mr. Softy regalia but the guy from the bathroom? Get out of here. That's crazy.
Starting point is 00:35:25 Yeah, dude. It is like literally like, whoa, this is blowing my mind. Have you ever been Carl Jung? You know anything about synchronicities? Yeah, you know I do, buddy. I think we're after a good start here, friend. Yeah, they got to talking. And Mr. Softy is like, hey, my name's Robert Prongay.
Starting point is 00:35:45 And this is my van. He's like, I use this van for surveillance. And Richard's like, oh my god, that's so cool. I swear, this is incredible undercover work. That's awesome. Cut to next week, where he rolls up in the hot dog mobile. So it's Kulklinsky in the hot dog mobile, and Mr. Softy right there.
Starting point is 00:36:05 Oh, he's a baseball game. And these two hitmen have just put on a hell of a show for the kids. Honestly, that's a great movie, them versus Bobby Bonilla. And you get actual Bobby Bonilla to play himself in the movie. It's an action movie. It's like passenger 57. He'd do it.
Starting point is 00:36:21 Well, Robert Prongay was, according to Richard, a former special forces soldier who would come to the same conclusion as Richard. He was good at killing, and he liked it. So killing was what he did. And this guy was, he was pretty much a Batman villain. Did he actually have ice cream in the ice cream truck? Did he have to stop, surveil?
Starting point is 00:36:40 Yes, sometimes. He was like, here's your ice cream, kid. Sometimes he would sell ice cream to the sons and daughters of his victims, like giggling about it. Well, that got more brutal than I thought for a guy who dressed up as Mr. Softy. The way Richard Kuklinski describes him. It was just like, it's like me and Prongay.
Starting point is 00:37:01 We had a good time. He taught me a lot. But Prongay was very, very insane. And it's like, for him to say it, it's like Robert Prongay was like, he had a mustache, long, crazy hair. He was apparently a demolitions expert. And he did everything out of his fucking Mr. Softy ice
Starting point is 00:37:21 cream truck. And he lived in a warehouse, and all he did was murder and mayhem. He is, this is the evil clown from Twisted Metal. What the hell's the name of that guy again? Yeah, I can't remember. Time for a good, sweet tooth. Sweet tooth.
Starting point is 00:37:35 This guy's literally sweet tooth from Twisted Metal. Yeah, he definitely is, man. Wow. Richard said that Prongay even had an authentic death library in his ice cream truck garage. He had survivalist magazines, and books on murder, how-to books, and explosives, and booby traps. But most intriguingly, to Richard,
Starting point is 00:37:55 were the books on poison. Oh, OK. Also, I have the entire collection of the Calvin and Hobbes. Yeah. Retrospective, if you want them, they're fun to listen to. It takes you back to childhood, Richie. The last thing I want to do is go back to childhood.
Starting point is 00:38:10 Sorry, I said it, cheese. Then he slowly puts the drumstick back into his pocket and be like, he does not want this, then. So the first time that Richard and Robert had a little play date at Prongay's garage, Richard noticed that Robert had a pretty solid poison collection. Are we talking about, like, a friendship here? This?
Starting point is 00:38:30 Yes. Do we have a sit, man? Like, relationship blossoming? Did we just become best friends? I don't know. It's like him and Richie hanging out. I believe. I don't know if it's true or not.
Starting point is 00:38:41 This may be conjecture. I didn't see any evidence of it in any of the documentaries. But I think they had friendship bracelets. Get out of here. I believe it. Well, after seeing the poison, Richard, being something of a scientist himself, asked what Robert's preferred method of delivery was.
Starting point is 00:38:58 And what Prongay told Richard changed the entire game. No, it better not be in the Spider-Man candy, or the Spider-Man ice cream bars. Oh, I love those with the awful gumball eyeballs. So good. Yeah. They're just frozen gumballs. You can't even eat them.
Starting point is 00:39:12 It was delicious. I like the Ninja Turtle ones as well. Oh, great. Well, Prongay said that he used his poison in a spray, mixing cyanide with dimethyl sulfoxide, or DSMO. DSMO is actually used to penetrate the skin and other membranes without damaging them whatsoever. And when it penetrates the skin,
Starting point is 00:39:35 it carries the other compounds throughout the bloodstream. And that made DSMO a perfect delivery system for cyanide. And that gave Richard his most deadly and efficient tool yet. He's sort of like the character from Upgrade that sneezes on the bartender, and then the bartender takes all the, did you see that? No, not yet. It's a great movie.
Starting point is 00:39:56 Oh, I want to see it. Yeah, it's not even a ruin. Upgrade's got great, great kills in it. So he's upgrading his hitman status here. Yep. It's very interesting. Their relationship, I believe it is real. I believe of all the stories, because the way
Starting point is 00:40:10 he talks about Prongay is close to him talking about a crush she had in high school. He loved Prongay. They got along famously. I also think this show is a pattern that we're going to see later on that would be Richard's demise. I think that weirdly, Richard was always very lonely. Yes.
Starting point is 00:40:30 And I think that in many ways, he says that he was this hardened criminal, that he did all of this shit for, and he was a lone wolf, and he could trust no one, and he treated everybody at arm's length. I think that what we're looking at is that Richard's actually just an unstable maniac. And when he found out Robert Prongay was his friends,
Starting point is 00:40:51 like they became friends, he actually does become friends with people. But his problem is, is the way he sort of absorbs those feelings of friendship, where normally people go through a big thing of cutting friendships off, like you see a big cut off toxic relationship outside of your life, like that kind of shit. The way he would do that is fucking kill you.
Starting point is 00:41:11 Right, right, right. Yeah, that's the thing. They say lone wolves, oh, they're so strong. Wolves are pack animals, and they're lonely. And that's why when you ever see a bike club called the Lone Wolves, there's always 30 of them, because they still want to be with friends. Well, Robert and Richie, they were such bosom buddies
Starting point is 00:41:29 that Richard actually rented a garage near Prongay's Mr. Softy base, just so they could be close enough to trade weapons and tactics and just hang out. You know, I was looking at some listings around the area, Richie, and I said, there's an unavailable killer's warehouse down the street, if you were looking at me like, actually, it sounds like a great idea.
Starting point is 00:41:52 Look at the, they have barbecues together, kill baseball players together, and they eat ice cream and stuff like that. You know, it's just nice, just the idea. People say that it's difficult to make friends after you're 30, and they're right, you know. What we have is something special, Richie. Well, he found a buddy.
Starting point is 00:42:16 Now, even though Prongay gave Richard his deadliest tool, what the media focused on was the body disposal technique that Robert gave to Richard. And that's the thing, is that this was blown way, way out of proportion. All right. Of course, it always is, because they have to figure out how to give him a nickname, right?
Starting point is 00:42:37 So this was the way to hang a hat on him. They sort of call it Richie the Iceman in real life, but mostly they called him the Pollock, or Big Guy. Right, Big Rich. So sometimes, Robert and Richard worked on jobs together. This particular job was an insurance scam concocted by the wife of the mark. The guy needed to die, but they needed to give the appearance
Starting point is 00:43:00 of him dying much later than he actually did. So the future widow had enough time to get the insurance policy in place. Okay. Hey, hey, Robert, you know what we could do? So what if we put those like inflatable shoes on him, like we saw him back to the future too. Right.
Starting point is 00:43:17 Or like future sunglasses, so it looks like he died in the future. That's a good one. You know, Richie, you're dumb, but you're cute. And I like having you around. Yeah, very cool. I got some of them sunglasses when I got my pizza hut pizza. Oh yeah, man.
Starting point is 00:43:32 So Robert had an idea. Just freeze the guy. Oh, that way he would disappear, but when the body was found, it would be impossible to know when he actually died. Okay. So Prange killed the guy with the spray, put him in a meat freezer, and brought him out months later.
Starting point is 00:43:48 It's kind of like the way my mom does this thing, where like, I don't know if your mom does the same thing. It's very like, I think it's very Italian, but my mom will do stuff like, oh, I put, we had some birthday cake for my birthday in 2015. I put it in the freezer and we open it up. It's perfect. I know you're visiting.
Starting point is 00:44:05 So we could defrost the cake and you could have some of it. And I was like, why don't we just get new cake? She's like, I froze it. It's perfectly fine. I mean, like, no, mom, it's not a time machine. A freezer's not a fuck, like you can't just put it in there and it appears in the other side, like totally fine.
Starting point is 00:44:19 That's how it works. To some degree, a freezer is a time machine. A little bit, a little, it freezes time. No, it freezes food. Which happens when it's baked? And then time, time is a constant. It freezes food and it alters the taste of the food. If it's really cold, it's different
Starting point is 00:44:36 than if it's really warm. No, no, it makes no sense that that doesn't work like that. Time is a little different though. Well, the scheme works. The widow got the check and there was split three ways between her and the two hitmen. All right. So since it works so well,
Starting point is 00:44:51 Richard figured he'd try it all on his own. He didn't have a freezer, but he made do. Hey, Robbie, do you think it's cool if I use your freezer for this little job I got? It's like, honestly, Richie, I'm not just a hitman. I'm also an ice cream salesman. And so this stuff has to go somewhere, Richie.
Starting point is 00:45:09 I love to help you, but right now I'm pretty extended. All right? Today's last podcast on the left is brought to you by Honey. When you shop online, do you turn into a tab hoarder? I bet you do. You load dozens and dozens of new tabs on your browser. You're looking for a promo code that works and you just can't find one,
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Starting point is 00:46:51 the Iceman would ever freeze a body. And he'd only do it once with a guy named Richard Maske. And this murder is confirmed. So Maske hadn't crossed Richard, but he had annoyed him. Uh-oh. See Maske had been getting on Richard's ass about getting a load of stolen blank VHS tapes for the purposes of bootlegging pornography.
Starting point is 00:47:17 So because Maske wouldn't shut up about it, Richard popped him in the face with a 22 while he was taking a dump. That's the worst way to go, man. That's the saddest way. Because Richard was taking a dump while Maske was taking a dump. Oh yeah, I mean, when Richard was taking a dump,
Starting point is 00:47:32 why is he in there? That's an invasion of privacy, and he stood his ground. Hey, come here. I just took a 15-inch log. You gotta come see this, this is crazy. Oh, man. He comes in here and just blows his brains out. I am happy that phase of every boy has friends
Starting point is 00:47:50 who demand that you look at what they've done in the bathroom, and I'm happy that phase is over because I never liked it, it's disgusting. I don't know, the urge is still there to wanna show someone. It is always there. I don't know why it's hardwired in to do it. Every once in a while, when I'm impressed myself,
Starting point is 00:48:07 it takes all my energy to not at least document it. So after Richard shot Maske, he threw the body down the well, covered the top, poured cement over it, and left him there for two years. Then he got a phone call that said, seven days. Imagine if the ring was just this guy as opposed to the girl, okay. I could just see him strangle in the girl from the ring,
Starting point is 00:48:34 spend like, you're not gonna tell me how long I have. And when the guy was eventually brought back out, two years later, he was perfectly preserved. Wow. Oh. Now, it's not surprising that Richard and Robert Prange got along, because it seems like these two dudes
Starting point is 00:48:51 were the rabid dog assassins of the mafia world. And that is definitely true, at least in Richard's case. But Richard may have overstated his importance just a little bit. Yes. Yes, he definitely forest-gumped himself a little bit. He had some story building, I think in the time he took while he was in jail,
Starting point is 00:49:10 and talking with Philip Carlo about the story, I think that Carlo got really impressed by Richie's stories, and that eventually Richie picked up on it and started feeding him bigger and bigger stories, because the two of them were making each other feel good. Yeah, and of course he learned that when he took his classes at the Ark Improv Theater.
Starting point is 00:49:31 Yes, and, and just roll into it. So Richard claimed that he was the one who murdered Bonanno crime boss, Carmine Galanti, over on Knickerbocker and Jefferson, over in Bushwick. Okay. And that restaurant's still there, Joe's. Yeah, oh. Joe and Mary's.
Starting point is 00:49:47 Great. Richard said he was the man on the inside, one of a three-man hit crew. Now, there was a three-man hit crew, but they were later identified. No one, Buck Koklinski, ever said that he was involved in the hit, and it was never mentioned until Philip Carlo's book.
Starting point is 00:50:06 I mean, he's done so many murders, why even lie about it? He also lied about the murder of Paul Costilano at Spark Steakhouse, over on 46th and Manhattan. And that one, Richard said he was part of a crew that all wore big, goofy, Russian hats for some reason. It is funny. I love what he dresses up.
Starting point is 00:50:26 I just wanna see this guy's closet. Honestly, he is a God of Cartoon character. He's just so fil- He's a character, he's a regular Phil Hartman. I guess so. Well, you know, that's very funny. He got a lot of details wrong when he retold the story. But it is willfully ignorant to assume
Starting point is 00:50:46 that Richard was lying about everything, which some people think he is. And there's a lot of proof that Richard was involved in quite a few murders. And while a lot of that proof wouldn't hold up in a court of law, think about O.J. Simpson and K.C. Anthony. Just because they're walking the streets
Starting point is 00:51:04 doesn't mean they didn't both commit murder. Well, I read a book that said if he did it. If, and that's a big thing, because it's really just grew a lot of to think about anything, a lot of thing about anything, a lot of imagine anything. But I think that Richard, he had a lot of firsthand knowledge
Starting point is 00:51:23 of what it took to kill people. He was a contract killer. Again, I think the whole thing comes down to he was not Italian, so he was never on the inside. They kept him out of all of the big things that he could do, that he could be involved in because they needed loyalty. That only came from the fake loyalty
Starting point is 00:51:40 that you get from joining the mafia. He was Polish, there's only so much he could do. So I think that he wanted to be in, really, really badly. And I think a part of it has got to do with being a part of a family that he could call his own. And he had such a hard time finding people he could connect to, which is why people joined gangs
Starting point is 00:52:02 in the first place. I'm just gonna push back a little bit on that, Henry. He has a family, why just goes in? He's got a whole family, he's got daughters, he's got wife. And speaking of family, speaking of his family, in particular, there was no place on earth that Richard loved more than Disney World. He loved it, he loved it.
Starting point is 00:52:22 Him and his family, every summer, would go to Orlando and they would spend an entire week at the Magic Kingdom. They would be there when the gates open and they would only leave after they were kicked out of the park. And the entire time, Richard said that he had a bigger smile on his face than any of the kids. Wow.
Starting point is 00:52:43 Said it was the only place that he never blew up, he never got angry, he never beat anybody, he never threatened anybody. When they were at Disney World, all was right. I mean, honestly, man, it's a good thing he didn't freak out because Walt Disney's security, you think it's a cute place? Those people are ex-Navy seals.
Starting point is 00:53:00 They will mess you up. Walt Disney's security is not messing around. Also, Richard, I don't know, I think it comes under his level of threatening. I do think there was probably like one or two times where he's just like, hey, Mickey, I'm so glad he is. Take a picture with my kids, this is nice. Mickey, tell my children that you love them.
Starting point is 00:53:20 Mickey, why aren't you speaking? I heard a story that there's a 16-year-old boy inside you, Mickey, and then you're not really Mickey. Is that true? Very good, I love it. Any idea on the favorite Disney ride? Nope, he didn't say, but he loved everything. He loved roller coasters, he loved the rides,
Starting point is 00:53:40 he loved the tea cups. Really? There's nothing about Walt Disney World that he didn't absolutely fucking cherish. A little unnerving, a little unnerving, but all right. Meanwhile, Kuklinski and Prongay, they were still getting along like peas and carrots. Is it Disney World, he's got a buddy?
Starting point is 00:53:56 This guy is really coming together here. Robert showed Richard how to rig a radio-transmitted grenade under a guy's car for a long distance killing, and Richard took Prongay to meet his rats. Oh. No, listen, Robert, I'm gonna have you meet some very important people to meet. People that are close to the family,
Starting point is 00:54:16 closer than even you. Richie, I always knew that one day we'd get past the border of our own personalities, and really get to know each other, all right? This is my family of a thousand rats. This is a wonderful family of racing, Richard. Beautiful, healthy, happy rats. Yeah, and Prongay was so impressed, he was like,
Starting point is 00:54:41 awesome, dude, fucking cool, man, this is fucking cool, man. All right, well, some friendships are grown out of the love of music, or movie, or maybe D&D. Yeah. Others are serial killing and rats. However. Technically, we're close to this friendship. Actually, we're pretty close to this.
Starting point is 00:55:03 Yes, I mean, many people would be disturbed if they found out, like, you know, our mind and yours, Ben, our bonding experience was cannibal holocaust, had they ever actually seen cannibal holocaust. It's a major feature film, it was very popular at its time. It's on Netflix for crying out loud. But it's very disturbing, I guess we're like
Starting point is 00:55:20 one level below that. Yes, that story is very funny where they thought the director actually killed the main character, or one of the female leads, and then she had to show up in the courtroom after he was being prosecuted, and was like, I'm alive, what a fun day in the courtroom that must have been. Yes.
Starting point is 00:55:35 And then they set him free, thankfully. Well, one thing that's important to remember about Richard, though, is that unlike Prongay, Richard wasn't just a simple contract killer. He had his thumbs in all sorts of criminal pies, but those are some complicated fucking pies. Yes, they are maze-like pies, and every one of his fingers were up to their knuckles,
Starting point is 00:55:59 just labious deep in these pies. And he was a very, I think this is where we're gonna see how things eventually fall apart. I don't think Richard's got a lot of bandwidth when it comes to his mental acuity. I think that he was really good at murdering people. But then once he got involved in the business side, and really started believing that he was super, super smart,
Starting point is 00:56:22 that he started fucking up. Yeah, all right. Yeah, supposedly he had a whole like cocaine deal going on in Brazil. And he said he went back and forth to Switzerland for like five years overseeing a Nigerian currency exchange scam or something. How'd that go?
Starting point is 00:56:39 It went great. He was making so much fucking money. Look at that. Meanwhile, his rats are all going to college, getting little degrees. I mean, if he was telling the truth about that, then he was making so much money doing that. If he would have just done that, then he would have been great,
Starting point is 00:56:56 but he didn't just do that. He did a lot of other shit. So if you want to know about the whole currency exchange scam thing and the Brazilian Coke deal and the Colombians and all that shit, go read Confessions of the Iceman. Go read the Philip Carlo book. But it's too complicated for us to go into. All right.
Starting point is 00:57:15 So instead, let's get into the downfall of Richard Kuklinski. So we just covered, this was like the peak of his life. He had his buddy. This is everything was rolling around. This is the montage scene in every mafia movie where it's too good to be true. Yes. OK.
Starting point is 00:57:30 I think it's in the Iceman. I think this is the montage scene from the Iceman. He is doing a lot of contract killing. He's in good with Dimeo. Dimeo got to be a made man. Dimeo is now making a lot more money. And so shooting more jobs, Iceman's way. He's hanging out with Prongé, his only real friend
Starting point is 00:57:47 besides Phil Soleimani. It's like they were more like co-workers and they kind of spurred each other on. They were the Pippin and Jordan, right? They were like helping each other. Sure. But then you have to again. You can update that reference at any time.
Starting point is 00:58:00 I don't have another one. Look at Jordan Curry or. Yeah. I don't know who those are. Yes. Soleimani, that was like Pippin and Jordan. But his relationship with Prongé was more like Pippin and Mary.
Starting point is 00:58:11 Yeah. All right. Here it is. All right. And so just I do cut to them just eating all the you know drumsticks and things like that after a kill. The park is particularly good. Yes.
Starting point is 00:58:24 All right. So the good times are not to last. Well, and it all started with a guy named George Maliband. Now Richard actually liked Maliband for whatever reason. And he wasn't above help of the mount in a jam. But when Richard refused to help Maliband out of a jam with Roy DeMeo, Maliband started with the threats. Why do that with Rich?
Starting point is 00:58:47 I wouldn't do it. Every time you threaten him, he's just going to fucking kill you. If you know anything about him, don't threaten him. Right. Maliband told Richard that he'd never let anything happen to him because he knew where Richard lived. And he knew where his family lived.
Starting point is 00:59:02 I will say that leverage usually works with a person unless that person hates their family. In which case, he's like, yeah, do you know where they live? Great. Here's when they're home. As soon as the words left Maliband's mouth, Richard pulled over to the curb, brought out his gun, and shot him five times.
Starting point is 00:59:19 All right. Damn. Yeah, it was like, that's those kind of stories where it's like, when you think that everything's false, this has ended up being, this is a true story that got connected to him. And he would just pop because, you know, building and building and building, you just
Starting point is 00:59:34 don't want to threaten a Polish person. Not when I'm in a corner. Polish man's in a corner. Nothing's as dangerous as a Polish man in a corner. Well, I know. Because you swipe. I don't know why you're always bringing it to yourself in the Polish.
Starting point is 00:59:47 Because resilient people, strong of brow, love EDM at a bone-crushing volume that no other race could handle. I didn't realize that stereotype. Well, now Richard had a disposal problem, because Maliband was a big boy. He was. Came in at about 300 pounds.
Starting point is 01:00:06 Ooh. And despite this, Richard tried going the old 55-gallon drum dumped at the chemical plant root. Can you put a 300-pounder in a 55-gallon? No, you cannot. Oh. Well, I'll amend that. You can if you cut one of the legs off.
Starting point is 01:00:21 Sure. Yeah, which is what Richard had to do after he spent all night long trying to stuff this big tub of lard into a 55-gallon drum. And even then, when he put the top on, the top didn't fit all the way. And that's how Richard got caught. I would appreciate if you didn't describe my body like that
Starting point is 01:00:39 when you're talking to the person who's going to stuff me into a coffin when I'm dead. If you just be like, put that and cut the big bastard's legs off. I would just, you know. No, we're going to give you a coffin that is your size. I promise. Yes, we'll get ready to spend a lot of extra money.
Starting point is 01:00:53 We'll do it. We will. Gladly do it. We will. Yes, or your urn will be the size of a KFC family dinner bucket, if it has to be. So Richard took the can, took the big canister to the chemical plant, got it out of his van,
Starting point is 01:01:13 rolled it down the hill, and then took off. But he didn't stick around to see the drum hit the bottom of the ravine. And when it hit the bottom of the ravine, it hit a rock. When it hit a rock, the top popped out. And so did George Maliband's leg. Ooh. Yes.
Starting point is 01:01:31 So there's a couple of things here. I think number one, what we're going to see now is that Richard Quincy is advancing in age. A part of it operating the top level that he needed to do for a long time, I honestly think that it comes down to being physically strong enough to be able to do it. I think he was getting tired.
Starting point is 01:01:49 I think that he also said that a part of it was a time constriction he put on himself, where he said that he didn't have the time to weld it shut, which he knew he should have, but he didn't do it. So he dumped him out there. And I kind of think that he, at this point, was also very confident. But I think that maybe this is the kind of thing
Starting point is 01:02:06 where, Castle, I look at you, cardio is really good. Keeps the heart strong. Doing a little bit even light weights. If you put a couple of little leg weights on your legs, you get strong enough so you can get that hip motion. So if you've got to dump a 300-pound, 55-gallon drum filled with a human body into a ravine, you'll be able to do it.
Starting point is 01:02:26 Well, I do have blood clots, so those weigh more. I guess, I don't know. So he should have taped this thing up. He's got a duct tape at the very least. He should have taped it up, but what, actually, what doesn't make any sense to me is that, yeah, he was getting older, but this wasn't, he had much easier ways
Starting point is 01:02:43 of disposing of bodies. Like, this was a huge pain in the ass in every way. Like, trying to stuff it into a barrel and driving it all the way out and having to cut the leg off. Like, this wasn't easier by any stretch of the imagination. Why didn't he just, to use the cliche, go back to the well? Why didn't he just throw it back in the well?
Starting point is 01:02:59 Well, the well. He cemented it shut. Yeah, he'd cemented it shut. But he also had, like, abandoned minds. He had the rat cave. The rats would have loved it. The rats would have loved it. And yet, he still did this.
Starting point is 01:03:09 So this one's a little, I don't get this one. Okay. Well, either way, the murder of George Maliband was what put Richard Kuklinski on the radar of law enforcement for the first time. See, George Maliband's brother knew that George had gone to see Richard Kuklinski on the night he died, but nothing came of the investigation.
Starting point is 01:03:29 They went and they talked to him, but Richard said, I don't know nothing. And he seemed to have gotten away with it, but he was about to do something that would bring everything crashing down. Uh-oh. See, Richard had always wanted his own gang, even after the coming up roses debacle of his youth.
Starting point is 01:03:49 He knew he'd never be in a mafia family, so he was gonna make his own mafia family. And the mafia wouldn't be invited. Just get a barley baseball team. That's what it is. It is a baseball team. It's a fun little, he wanted his own crew. But guess what, man?
Starting point is 01:04:05 Some people are not leaders. Yeah. I feel like if you gave Carl Pansram a team, he was never supposed to have a team. He's a great member of a team. You remember when they revamped, I think it was He-Man, they had the big gorilla in it?
Starting point is 01:04:18 Yeah. I do remember that. He's a good bruiser. He would be wonderful on sort of like D&D. He's the guy that goes in and messes up everybody, and then you have people that are dude, you gotta have a healer, and then you have somebody who does pirate,
Starting point is 01:04:33 if you do long range hits. That's what he does, up close and personal. He's never supposed to be the, he can't be a paladin. No. Yes, he's not the Professor X of the group here. He's a Wolverine type, perhaps. Very much, he's absolutely the best he is at what he does. Okay.
Starting point is 01:04:48 So Richard put together a B&E crew of four guys. Percy House, Danny Deppner, Gary Smith, and Al Rinky. Oh, Al Rinky even made the cut, interesting. These were all dudes, the Kokolinski had met at Phil Solomonet's base of operations, which they called The Store. Okay.
Starting point is 01:05:07 And these dudes were about the biggest group of morons to live the criminal lifestyle. And I think the reason why Richard chose them was because you had to be a goddamn idiot to work with Richard Kokolinski, because guys who worked with Richard Kokolinski didn't end up dead with fair frequency. Right, and I think Kokolinski at this point,
Starting point is 01:05:26 he wanted to be the smart one, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it kind of cascades down from there. He wanted men that he could easily lead and would not question his authority. But the problem is again, is that when you're putting together these teams, right, you have to understand me like everybody's
Starting point is 01:05:43 a fucking snitch, everybody has no morals. One thing about it, so he hated Roy DeMail. One thing you can say as a pro for Roy DeMail, quote unquote pro for Roy DeMail, he kept his fucking team of serial killers together without them fighting and killing each other. Kokolinski always looked at Roy DeMail, looked down on him being like,
Starting point is 01:06:00 I'm the one who should be in the mob. But as soon as he got this group of fucking problem children, they all just shit the bed immediately. I do feel like we're currently living in a world, a macro world of this, idiot at the top and then we just see everyone, the dumber underlings. Yes, yeah, and actually as a way to further that,
Starting point is 01:06:20 one of the main features of really dumb dickheads is their inability to keep their mouth shut. Braggadocious idiots, okay. And these guys were no different. See, Percy House was trying to shake down Phil Salamene for a little bit of cash. And in response, Phil told Percy about both the ice murder of Richard Maske
Starting point is 01:06:41 and the barrel murder of George Maliband, essentially saying, don't fuck with me or Big Rich is gonna do the same to you. So these guys are- Aren't you thinking with your fucking brain, Phil? You don't tell him about Big Rich, the whole point? The fucking, no, Big Rich is supposed to stay secret. He's supposed to stay secret, that's a whole fucking point.
Starting point is 01:07:03 You fucking asshole. So these are the kind of people that would like live stream their crimes or like show all the loot they stole from a bank on Instagram. This is the level of dumbness that we're talking about here. Well, Percy did take the threat to heart, but he also went and immediately told his crew
Starting point is 01:07:20 and they told their wives and their girlfriends and their friends. And before Richard knew it, his reputation as a killer was no longer an asset. Oh my goodness. See, when it came to the higher ups, like it was good for them to know what you were capable of. But when you got underlings,
Starting point is 01:07:37 no one all about your bullshit, those guys now have something to trade and your ass is permanently out in the wind. Right. And they also know it's both to use it against Richie and also because then they can do their own dumb shit bragging about there with the great Richard Kuklinski, who's a fucking murderer.
Starting point is 01:07:55 He chose me. And I'll get to be with Richie all the time. And you can tell me, I'll tell you what it's like hanging out with us, man. Guess what? Real quiet. Yeah. He's real quiet.
Starting point is 01:08:06 Yeah. I'll tell you all about him. You know what he likes? Big food. And his shoes are big. His hands are big. He's got big jacket on me, Richie. We go way back.
Starting point is 01:08:16 About eight months. Wow. He's my best friend. Wow. The world's dumbest verbal wildfire. And as soon as Richard was exposed, even a little, a plucky little cop named Pat Cain entered the scene. I hate this guy.
Starting point is 01:08:33 Pat Cain. I like him. I like Pat Cain. I don't like Pat Cain. He's Irish, that's for sure. What? He's Irish. Pat Cain's an Irish last name.
Starting point is 01:08:41 Patrick Cain. Patrick Cain. They're all Irish. That's how it works. A Cain was the youngest detective at his outpost and he was having a little bit of trouble establishing himself. Oh.
Starting point is 01:08:54 I just don't like the fact, the way they talked about it, he was like, he was a good Catholic boy. And every day he got up and he combed his hair and he put on his suit and everyone knew Patrick Cain, he was a law abiding man. And there's no way you'd ever get him to shirk his duty as a police officer.
Starting point is 01:09:11 And it's like, yeah, good. Right. Not all police officers can be fantastic, right? There are other types of police officers like my father that did things a little differently. You know, Pete Schnops is just part of the job. Everyone has that on their belt. Well, Patrick Cain's lucky break came
Starting point is 01:09:29 when Al Rinky got arrested on a B&E job and wanted to make a deal. And if Al Rinky got a lesser sentence, the cops would get Danny Deppner, Gary Smith, Percy House, and a guy that Rinky only knew as Big Rich. Wait a second, you wanna say save a horse ride a cowboy? Ooh. Does that say Big Rich?
Starting point is 01:09:53 What is that bad, Big Rich and something? Big and rich. Big and rich. It's just big and rich. Big and rich. Oh, look at that. And so began a six year struggle on the part of Pat Cain to take down Richard Kuklinski for good.
Starting point is 01:10:07 Oh. See, if Richard hadn't been so intent on these being his guys, he might've just dusted them all immediately and got away scot-free like he did with the dudes in the B&E with the old coins and the stamps. Right. Well, he, okay, he started breaking his own rules.
Starting point is 01:10:25 That was kind of what happened. And I can kind of see this. That's why it's like, they even talk about it a little bit in the Ice Man where I do believe it. I do think that some of the family stuff and the shit with Kuklinski trying to be like a real straight guy and trying to get out of the business. Like that was a kind of thing.
Starting point is 01:10:42 I think there was a point where that it was true. Where Phil really was his friend. And Percy was Phil's brother-in-law. And so Phil made a big case saying that this, you gotta have these guys so they were like family. So Richard did the thing where he broke his own rules and said, okay, I'll stick by your guys, which is mostly just think,
Starting point is 01:11:03 I think he was trying to soften his heart. I think he got so close to kissing Prange so many times that he knew that somewhere inside of him was like, there was something, there were like feelings. And they said that Barbara knew it the day that he put on, because every day for Christmas, he would dress his Santa Claus and give out the presents to the family.
Starting point is 01:11:23 And so when he would go, in Christmas time this year, she said, his hat drooped a little bit more that year. And he sat staring at the floor, thinking about something and made him upset. And that there was something, maybe there was a crack showing in his exterior. Interesting, I think you should have dressed as Krampus. That would be more appropriate for his lifestyle.
Starting point is 01:11:43 We did a great Krampus interview for our Patreon this week as well. So if you get a chance, go listen to that. Well, since Richard hesitated, he didn't get away scot-free. Oh no. Now once Al Rinky flipped, cops jumped on Percy House. And once Percy went down, Richard hid Danny Deppner
Starting point is 01:12:00 and Gary Smith in a hotel and told him to not move a fucking muscle. But Gary wanted to go see his little daughter. So he went and saw his little daughter. Damn it, Gary, what is your fucking problem? You just stay in the hotel, Gary. You just do it. I'm just gonna be the little advice gremlin
Starting point is 01:12:18 that goes around to the mob. Well, it's tough to do. So for the cardinal's sin of disobeying, Richard gave Gary a cyanide spiked hamburger, then made Danny Deppner finish the job by strangling him with a lamp cord. Okay. And here's another place
Starting point is 01:12:33 where I don't really understand Richard's thinking. Instead of disposing of the body, Richard and Danny just stuffed it under the bed and left. Of the, you don't think room service is gonna find that? Richard said that he did this because there was a security guard out and there were people and such and such. Oh my God, you got a weekend at Bernie's,
Starting point is 01:12:54 the situation, tie your legs together. There's two of you. Just walk out, three of you. I think that he was getting tired. And he had other shit going on. Because if you do believe he was going back and forth from Zurich, which is what they said he was doing, he also was working on porn distribution.
Starting point is 01:13:12 He also was doing his own contract killing. And he was also trying to evade the police doing his own B&E shit. And he knows, I think that he's cracking. And so they dumped them under there. I think him kind of thinking that like, cause that's what he said. At this point, he is completely a secret.
Starting point is 01:13:28 He doesn't really know who's flipped on him and how many leaks are starting to come out of the boat of who he really is to the police. There's a lot. Now I get to mention my favorite product, Flex Seal. He needs to do that with his life. Well, it's also possible like Richard thought the cops wouldn't be able to connect him with the murder.
Starting point is 01:13:47 And in other circumstances, he would have been right because cops had found the body and it pretty much called it a cold case. But Danny Deppner had told his ex-wife the whole goddamn story. Uh-oh, Lord. And just as soon as he told her, she went to the cops because she thought, oh fuck, now I know about this.
Starting point is 01:14:08 I might be next. Yeah, that's the thing, you get it off your chest but you just give the other person the curse, basically. Yeah. And when you're giving it to old Rhonda the carp with a mouth like a zoo, she's gonna tell everybody what's going on. Unbelievable.
Starting point is 01:14:21 Now this wasn't really enough to arrest Richard but it was among the first entries into a file on Richard Kuklinski that eventually grew so large that the cops in charge of it called it the Manhattan Project. Wow. So the more Kane looked into Kuklinski, the more dirty shit he found. Like road rage incidents where Richard
Starting point is 01:14:42 had put his fist through car windows and Richard's involvement in the porno game. Okay. And nothing made Patrick Kane more mad than legal pornography. And they said that they knew in him, he could so mad about it, he hated pornography because he was a good Christian man.
Starting point is 01:14:56 And they said, you'd be surprised this character changed. We saw him drinking a little tipple before going into work in the morning. So it's like, he's like hand is shaking, he's like, little Kuklinski breaking laws. The book never said anything about him hating pornography. You're making that up. I see it in his walk.
Starting point is 01:15:14 I see it in his eyes. You look at pictures of him. I mean, but wasn't the pornography bestiality? Well, I mean, they didn't know, they didn't look through his whole collection or anything like that. Well, I think I might agree with Kane on this one. They just knew that he was involved in the pornography game
Starting point is 01:15:29 and back then the pornography game was a very dirty business, unlike today where it's just like so over. It's clean and it's perfect. Well, you know, the vivid, you know, every time we go to LA, we'll always drive past the vivid entertainment building. That's right.
Starting point is 01:15:44 And that tells you it's on the up and up. Yeah, yeah. I don't appreciate the way you circle it, Marcus. But that's fine. I do. I do believe that people should pay for their pornography and help these people. If there's a podcast called The Butterfly Affleck
Starting point is 01:15:55 that showed that what Pornhub did to the Portland Street and these people are people and new jobs. Yep, it's the Napster of pornography. Mm-hmm, but even though Kane was looking into Richard, Richard figured in his words, that Kane knew there was smoke, but didn't know where the fire was. And so Richard felt brazen enough
Starting point is 01:16:15 to go ahead and kill Danny Deppner as well. And this is another thing that kind of wrangles me a little bit. Uh-oh. See, after the hotel debacle, Richard put Danny Deppner up at his daughter's boyfriend's house. Some kid named Richie Peterson.
Starting point is 01:16:29 Yes, put it in little Richie Peterson's house. That doesn't seem like, that's not a good idea. It doesn't seem like. Richie Peterson was six foot six. He was a big boy. For some fucking reason, Richard wanted to pull him into the business. And I do not know why.
Starting point is 01:16:43 I don't know why he wanted him in there. He wanted to expand, I guess. Not even really wanted to pull him into the business like he just trusted him. Like he took a shine to him. And I guess it was another like family thing where he can treat everybody but his family like family. I think that I figured all of this out.
Starting point is 01:17:00 Richard Kuklinski is suffering from low T. He got low testosterone somewhere along the way. And it's why he ruined, it's why everything got ruined. As the men get older, even the hardest of men will become very soft. Yeah, maybe low T. Maybe low T. Maybe low T.
Starting point is 01:17:15 It could be low T. I don't know. Maybe, yeah. And for some reason like Richard trusted this kid. He trusted him so much that when Richard finally killed Danny with a cyanide spiked roast beef sandwich followed by a shot to the head, Richard asked Peterson to help him get rid of the body
Starting point is 01:17:32 because Richard's back was going bad. Now I'm just thinking about Arby's. I know, big roast beef. Yeah. Yeah, Tana. I do like that. I like that roast beef and cheese, man. I really like the onion roll so good.
Starting point is 01:17:42 Ooh, yeah. Now either Carlo fucked up the facts or Richard had already covered the head or Richie Peterson was the dumbest motherfucker alive. But Kuklinski told the kid that Danny had died of an OD. But you know what I think it is too with Richie Peterson? I think number one, he is a fucking moron. But then number two, your new girlfriend Merrick
Starting point is 01:18:02 is she is sweet as pie and wonderful. What does she know that secret information about her father? His father, her father has many bulging pockets and rubber shoes, the signs of a contract killer. He disappears for hours at a time. The brother at this point, Dwayne had already found a gigantic pallet of pornography that he had hid in their garage.
Starting point is 01:18:25 They already found that. He knew he did a bunch of weird ass shit. I am pretty certain that word had gone around in the neighborhood of what Richard was. And I think that it's really difficult to refuse the offer of your girlfriend's father who is a contract killer. He's also your size, 300 pounds, 40 years older than you.
Starting point is 01:18:44 So he's got that old man strength. I think that you're just kind of locked in. I think it comes down to you're gonna help me move this body. He died of falling down the stairs. And you see that half his head's missing and you are like, yeah, sure thing. Merrick's dad, yeah, okay. Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 01:19:02 It's like if you go and visit your girlfriend's father for the first time and he wants to take you shooting. Ah, yeah. And then you gotta go deer hunting for some reason. I understand that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he puts like antlers on a hat on you. And it's like, all right, Kissel, run, run.
Starting point is 01:19:17 I mean it, I said run, there's a 24 point buck. Look, everyone look at 24 point buck. Well, following that incident, Richard got even more reckless. His next victim was Paul Hoffman, his cyanide hookup. Richard lured in Hoffman with a fictional shipment of an ulcer medication called Tagamet. But when Hoffman showed up with 25 grand in cash,
Starting point is 01:19:40 Richard shot him in the neck and beat him to death with a tire iron. The body then went into a barrel and Richard drove to Harry's luncheonette in hack and sack for a roast beef. Oh, yeah. And for some reason, Richard decided to leave the barrel
Starting point is 01:19:56 next to his favorite diner. And he said the damn thing sat there for weeks. And sometimes he'd grab a roast beef and have lunch sitting on the damn thing. And then one day it was just gone. All right. I think people decided to not ask him questions sometimes. I think he'd sit on top of this barrel
Starting point is 01:20:15 and then every once in a while he buys two sandwiches and he's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta go feed my friend outside. They're like, Richie, you're funny, but I wish you'd stop murdering near the restaurant. Yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Now, even though this does sound completely unbelievable,
Starting point is 01:20:33 I actually wouldn't be surprised considering how careless Richard was getting about everything. Now, I mean, it even could be like some sort of weird berserker mode, but I think actually at this point, I think Richard wanted to get caught. I think he wanted it all to be over. Really?
Starting point is 01:20:49 Yeah. I believe this, I believe it. I think that he, again, I think that's the sliding aspect of he's getting tired. I think that he knows for a fact that what happens is there's a lot of heat coming down, which we're also gonna find out because Roy DeMeo is getting a lot of heat,
Starting point is 01:21:05 which is his main connection. There's a lot of shit flying around. And eventually everyone's gotta join the mafia retirement plan, which is becoming a stool pigeon for the police. And so he will eventually know that he will be in a position like that or someone will flip on him.
Starting point is 01:21:21 And it's gotta be a lot of pressure. But because he's not a made man, wouldn't it be easier for him to just get out, buy some Hawaiian shirts, go down to Florida, he's got all the money, just retire? That was what he wanted to do. He should have done it. He really, but he thought he didn't have enough money yet
Starting point is 01:21:36 because what he really wanted to do was just move out to LA and just to live high off the hog on the pornography business out there. But he thought he didn't have enough money to just do that. Oh my goodness. So after Hoffman came Roy DeMeo, maybe. And DeMeo had spent pretty much the entirety
Starting point is 01:21:57 of the 80s fucking up. He'd gotten himself arrested for dealing in stolen cars and he'd gotten his rabbo, Nino Gagi, arrested for a double homicide. Wait, hold on, are you telling me, are you telling me someone in the 80s fucked up? I am like, I cannot believe that. Yes, it wasn't really his rabbi.
Starting point is 01:22:15 Nino Gagi, that was a term that they used for it. It was his, that was a spiritual quote, quote advisor, the guy that was the, that sort of brought him into the mob. Yeah, rabbi. Yeah. No, yeah, okay, yeah, okay. So yeah, people thought that I meant
Starting point is 01:22:30 his actual like Jewish rabbi. I don't think he's Jewish. No, he's not. Well, that happens. Yeah, I'm telling you. No, rabbi is a term like cops have a rabbi and you know, but mafia got criminals have rabbi. Okay, multiple rabbis.
Starting point is 01:22:43 Is it, it's Gagi? I think it's Gagi. Oh. Or could be Gagi. No, I thought it was Gagi. Yeah, it could be. I don't, I don't know, it could be Gagi. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:22:56 In addition to all that, there were rumors that Dimeo had been spending a little too much time with his law professor cousin, and that it was possible that he was gonna flip. So Richard says, this is when he finally had his chance for revenge. So Dimeo's number one crime was hanging out with someone with a law degree that might be intelligent.
Starting point is 01:23:16 Yes. Okay. Yes, good to know. But this whole thing could just be more of Richard's wishful thinking, because there are at least five suspects for the murder of Roy Dimeo, as Roy Dimeo was found in the open trunk of his car
Starting point is 01:23:30 filled with bullet holes. Now it could have been Richard, but more likely suspects include Patti Testa, Joseph Testa, Anthony Senta, Paul Costilano, or Nino Gagi. Oh my God, just throw Dan and Evito in there for fun. He wanted to be in it.
Starting point is 01:23:48 If there was a movie, he would at least audition for it, especially for Roy Dimeo. Honestly, Dan and Evito would have been incredible Roy Dimeo. He would have been. Okay. Yeah, I mean, he's still alive, you know. It could happen.
Starting point is 01:23:59 Well, the point here is that Richard is the long shot. Okay. But either way, Richard said that he had mixed feelings about the death of Roy Dimeo. Oh, that's pretty big feelings for him. In the Ice Man, basically the way it's broken down is that Roy Dimeo invites him for a private lunch, which always means he's about to fucking,
Starting point is 01:24:18 he's going to kill you or something. And the way he breaks down his, the passion of that, and then building and building and building, where he was like, and then I shot Dimeo five times in his fucking face. And he's like, you wonder whether or not it was just his fantasy.
Starting point is 01:24:39 It was, right? I honestly, I think it was complete and total fantasy. Oh, right? Now, Richard didn't really need to confess to any more murders than he'd actually committed because he had plenty on his plate at this point. Now, Percy House of the B&E crew was still alive and in jail and was looking to make a deal.
Starting point is 01:24:58 And as we said earlier, Percy was more protected than Gary Smith or Danny Deppner because Percy was Phil Solomonet's brother-in-law. And Phil kept telling Richard, Percy's a stand-up guy and you got nothing to worry about. Oh. But in fact, there was quite a bit to worry about. Uh-oh. Yes. See, Pat Cain had been talking to Percy
Starting point is 01:25:21 and Percy had given him three murders committed by Kuklinski, Louis Maske, George Maliband, and Paul Hoffman. But still, even with this, Pat Cain couldn't get his commanders to pay Kuklinski any mind. In fact, everyone at Cain's station thought that he was a goddamn idiot for chasing after Kuklinski
Starting point is 01:25:44 because there was no consistency in the choice of murder weapon. Oh. But I gotta tell you, I became so disappointed by Mike, associate to the police officers, I switched my taffy flavor from mint to sea salt. And I was almost, I was coming off the rails. I left my shirt unbuttoned one day. I was just like, well, I am falling to pieces.
Starting point is 01:26:04 He was, Pat Cain was nowhere near as fastidious as Henry's making him out to be. He actually developed quite a drinking problem from this case. He did. He thinks he's better than my father. He thinks he's better than my father. Put your butter knife down. Well, that's the thing about these cases,
Starting point is 01:26:21 that before you even think about convincing a jury, you got to convince your commanding officer first. Right. And if your commanding officer's not behind you, then you're on your own. That probably doesn't help that he smells like a gin mill every single day. And then the commanding officer's got to convince the DA.
Starting point is 01:26:37 And the DA and all you have to work together to build the case, because they're definitely not going to go to court unless if it's all going to fall apart. So Kuklinski, who's not a maid man, who is not a focus of any sort of investigation, whose name is slowly starting to arrive at this point, it's not viewed as anything, because Kuklinski worked really hard to make sure that nobody knew his fucking name, which
Starting point is 01:26:57 is also why in the book Five Families, his name was originally spelled wrong and then corrected, because he was kind of on the outskirts. And then all of a sudden, it's becoming more and more clear that this man is, to be honest, more than anything, a fucking serial killer. Well, and it's also maybe good that he is Polish, huh? Maybe.
Starting point is 01:27:14 Because then the cops say there's no way he could do it. So this is all of your complaining about how they're demeaning the Polish people. Maybe it's a good thing he was. It's a blessing. Yeah, maybe it is. It's a secret little blessing, isn't it? And sometimes being Polish is the gift that keeps giving.
Starting point is 01:27:30 Like one day, I will be the commandant of a Polish Day parade and get the certificate that gives you free pierogies for life in Warsaw. You just have to get there. Right. Well, the funny thing about the misspellings is that it's not just Kuklinski that got that treatment, having with Robert Prongay, too.
Starting point is 01:27:48 Because when we were looking into Prongay's background, we saw everywhere on the internet that, and even in Philip Carlo's book and other books as well, that his name was spelled P-R-O-N-G-E. Prongay. In reality, it's P-R-O-N-G-A-Y, Prongay. Prongay, I see. So that's what Annie found, is that everyone has actually
Starting point is 01:28:11 been spelling his name wrong. So these guys are shrouded in secrecy. They exist it. They're out there. Right. But people just don't know who they are by design. Well, that's one of those usually you don't like when your name is spelled wrong,
Starting point is 01:28:25 unless you're a contract killer. Spell it wrong every time. Yeah, fuck it up. Yeah. Well, luckily for Pat Cain, though, the bodies were about to start showing up. Oh, the first to be discovered was Danny Deppner. His body was being eaten by a buzzard
Starting point is 01:28:39 when a dirtbiker spotted it. The medical examiner discovered partially digested bits of sandwich in his stomach, as well as a shot to the head, which totally matched up with Barbara Deppner's description of the Gary Smith murder. But still, Cain's superiors weren't convinced. And meanwhile, Richard was continuing to run amok. He killed one hitchhiker coming off the George Washington
Starting point is 01:29:03 Bridge just for giving him the fingers Richard drove by. Uh-oh. And that one actually happened, because it's on record that the body was found in that time frame off the George Washington Bridge by a biker. He's going crazy. Well, one thing I don't believe is Richard's claims that he murdered three guys
Starting point is 01:29:19 for running a pedophile ring in North Jersey. No. Yeah, Richard said he discovered this place in the course of doing business with the Swiss. He said he didn't do anything about it the first time he saw it. But eventually, he returned, killed every adult in the house, and set like 20 kids free.
Starting point is 01:29:38 Oh, so this is a bit of a hero story here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if this actually happened, this would have been the biggest true crime story of the decade. Honestly, it sounds like a Frank Drebben from police or something of Frank Drebben from Naked Gun Fantasy story. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:56 Yeah, Richard Kraklinski is not the Polish punisher. And I even had any look for good measure, but not a single story exists in the records of anything like this happened. Sure. But one murder that Annie did find was the murder of Robert Prongay. So Richard and Robert were still hanging out a lot.
Starting point is 01:30:18 But Prongay was starting to become a little unhinged. Yeah, dude. Just eating all of his own ice cream and stuff. Yeah, dude. It could be a sugar high. It could literally be. His biggest vice could be a sugar high. I don't know what drugs he was using.
Starting point is 01:30:32 But he was fucking out on a limb. Well, Prongay had been having some personal problems. So he asked Richard to kill his wife and son for a nominal fee. Listen, all right, this is a big deal for me to even ask you, you know this, Richie. I know. I know this is big. This is kind of, I didn't think this would come.
Starting point is 01:30:53 And he's just like, it's just, it's a lot. All right, now, when it comes down to it, I don't want you to murder them because I hate them, or I hate my son, or I hate my wife. I don't want that. It's got nothing to do with rage. What's it got to do with it, Robbie? Just once, I want to know what it's
Starting point is 01:31:14 like to be free to be me, to let my hair go down from the back of my skull, up to the top of my eyebrows. With you, Richie, let's go to Southern California together. You kill my wife and son, and we take this ice cream machine all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Huh, kind of a love story. Well, you've seen what I think you're seeing. Yeah, let's kiss.
Starting point is 01:31:41 Let's kiss, Richie. Let's kiss until we're sore from it. Come on, buddy. It's so good to be true, you're going to break my heart. And that means I've got to kill you before you do, because I'm protecting myself. Oh, love story. Well, here's why I believe Richard's claim.
Starting point is 01:31:59 The article about Prongay's death said he was on trial for the firebombing of his ex-wife's house, aggravated assault, and terroristic threats towards both his ex-wife and son. Oh, my. And that's in addition to trying to run over them with his car. Did they all?
Starting point is 01:32:17 And he had threatened to kill his teenage son multiple times. This was all in the news story. So while the news story didn't mention anything about him being a contract killer, the behavior lines up with the request. Right. Thing was about Richard, though, is he had that no women, no children rule.
Starting point is 01:32:36 That's correct. So he said no. But that got Richard to thinking that Prongay might kill him for saying no, because saying no was a judgment. And after all, Richard had killed for much less. Yes. It's never good when contract killers get to thinking, because it's never a positive conclusion.
Starting point is 01:32:57 Well, and this was hard, apparently, for Kuklinski. He was afraid of Prongay in many ways. Like, he was looking at him, but he was also very attracted to Prongay. He liked his style. He liked what he did. He liked his flair. The other reason that Richard gave,
Starting point is 01:33:12 it's like another too good to be true story that, like the pedophile ring story, kind of paints Richard as the hero. It's like, supposedly, Prongay was planning to poison a water reservoir with ricin. Because he's a fucking Batman villain. If this is true, I don't know if this is true. Because he'd gotten a job to kill a whole family.
Starting point is 01:33:37 And Prongay figured that if he poisoned the reservoir, then nobody would know who the actual target was. It's too good to. It's so smart. It's stupid. Yeah. He's a Batman villain. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:33:49 He was incredible. Prongay, a full Mr. Softy outfit, just dumping ricin into a reservoir, just being like, I'll kill the whole fucking basketball team. What do I give a shit? Horrified. He's like tasting the ricin. He's like, oh, hell yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:06 And so Richard decided Prongay had to go. Richard said he snuck into Prongay's garage as Prongay was working on his ice cream truck and shot him five times in the back. And Prongay never knew what hit him. Well, the thing was is that they said that somehow he defeated Prongay's system. Because Prongay, I actually kind of believe
Starting point is 01:34:27 that if anything else is true about Prongay, then I believe that this is also real. He covered his work area in gravel so that when he was working on the ice cream truck, he could hear the steps. Like trying to catch the ghost. Like trying to catch a ghost by putting talcum powder down. Trying to see what happens.
Starting point is 01:34:47 And I almost feel like it gets to a point where Prongay hears a crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. He looks up. He sees Richie. He's got the stub nose out. Prongay's like, I see what you're doing here, buddy. And I gotta say, thumbs up. Let's give it a go.
Starting point is 01:35:05 You're the best of the best. I wouldn't have it be done by anybody else. So kill me, Richie. Woo, woo. Maybe. Now, the five shots in the back is not exactly what happened. We know this because we've got the story. And I quote from the article, an ice cream vendor
Starting point is 01:35:25 who failed to appear at his trial for arson and aggravated assault was found shot to death yesterday in a North Bergen garage. Robert Prongay, 39, was found hanging out at the driver's side door of his ice cream truck with two bullet holes in his chest. Wow. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:35:44 Died doing what he loved, sitting behind that ice cream truck wheel. It stands to follow that either Richard was mostly telling the truth about Robert Prongay or Richard remembered a newspaper article from August of 1984 about a violent ice cream man who was shot to death in his truck and incorporated it into his life story almost a decade later. I can't deal with all this.
Starting point is 01:36:09 Was it real or not? It was. Now, Prongay, that was real. Admittedly, the details don't match up perfectly. But memory, it's a fallible thing. And Richard could just be remembering it wrong. It's like, oh, was it five in the back or two in the chest? I can't fucking remember.
Starting point is 01:36:24 And he shot so many people. Yeah. But that was what we were talking about this. When Marcus and I were putting together the episode, we were talking a little bit about like, because if Richard made up Prongay, why wasn't he just the fucking novelist? Yeah, I mean, if he made up Prongay
Starting point is 01:36:39 and if he made up, you know, three quarters of the shit or even all of the things that he said he did, then he wasted an amazingly creative mind. OK. But I don't think he's that smart. No, I don't think so. I don't think he's that smart either. No.
Starting point is 01:36:53 So after Richard killed Prongay, he didn't see much of a reason to keep hanging around his garage if his body wasn't in the neighborhood anymore. So he moved everything out, including the body of Louis Mazgay, who was still frozen in the well. Oh. So Richard dumped it upstate and figured that was that. But the body was found too quickly,
Starting point is 01:37:15 before it completely defrosted. And when the medical examiner opened up the body, they found parts of him were still frozen. So they knew the murder hadn't happened recently, because you got to give time for the body to defrost for it to look like it only happened a few days before. Sure. So the cops started thinking about that Kuklinski
Starting point is 01:37:33 fella that they questioned way back when. And with that, Pat Cain's superiors finally admitted that there was something to this Richard Kuklinski. And Pat saw color for the first time in months. And he went skipping down. And he went all the way to the malt shop, because he knew that he was time to reward himself
Starting point is 01:37:53 for a job well done. And he got himself an egg cream, vanilla, just to make sure that he could just sit. And he didn't finish it, because he wanted to make sure that he could fit into his dress uniform for the award ceremony. Right, right. Now they knew they weren't going to get anything
Starting point is 01:38:10 on Richard as far as forensics went. And the hearsay testimony of Danny Deppner's ex-wife wouldn't hold up for a second in court. So Pat Cain got the idea to use bait to lure out the monster. Ooh. That bait came in the form of an undercover cop named Dominic Palifrone. Palifrone was a classic undercover cop.
Starting point is 01:38:33 The kind who thought being a criminal meant saying fuck every other word. Just like in Robert Picton. Yeah. It's the same thing with the guy they said a thing. And it's really true, because Dominic Palifrone, he looked sort of like, he looked like John Travolta with AIDS.
Starting point is 01:38:47 He was very sickly, very thick mustache. He was always dressed in his mob street clothes, because he had been undercover for too long. And if you listen to his, every time he speaks, he's like, this fucking guy went out, and he said, oh, that the fuck, that fuck, he's trying to fuck with me. And you got to make sure, if you're going to fuck with me, you're fucking with the fuck master.
Starting point is 01:39:06 I'm the fuck master, because that's what they called me. I went to fuck master school. And I got a fuck master's degree and an MFA, which is a master's fucking degree. Wow. Well, I believe that he's a criminal. Yeah, but he was actually really good at it. They said he was a fantastic actor.
Starting point is 01:39:20 He could just inhabit the character completely. And he was an ATF agent. And Cain pulled him into the case by telling him that Kuklinski was an arms dealer, which he was. OK. The only thing they had to figure out was how to get Polyphrone close to Kuklinski. And that missing piece ended up being the only friend
Starting point is 01:39:39 Richard didn't murder, Phil Solomoni. They sent Percy House to the store wearing a wire. And he got Phil's son to admit to a burglary in which an old man had been beaten to death. This is where it gets true crime complicated, folks. So keep your true crime listening muffs on. Wow. Then Phil himself spilled some illegal shit to the wire
Starting point is 01:40:03 as well, so Cain, using both the murder and Phil's own foibles as a carrot, got Phil to bring Dominique Polyphrone into the crew as Dominique Provenzano. OK. Change the first name, too, though. Is it just so that he would turn around when he heard Dominique Provenzano?
Starting point is 01:40:23 I guess so. That was the only thing I could think of as well. That's pretty smart. That's smarter. And it works. Because it wouldn't just be like, Poly. Poly, we're going to go do this murder together. Hey, Poly, what do you do?
Starting point is 01:40:35 Poly, and then Dominique is still just at the jukebox, just dancing to fucking sticks. The Poly. Poly, is it Dominique? Yes. Well, their plan was to convince Richard that Dom had been a buddy of Phil's for 20 years. And he'd just been like, out of town this entire time.
Starting point is 01:40:56 He's an out-of-town friend. And now he's back. Wow. He's from Canada. OK. Yeah, this is my buddy from Canada. You know the Canadian mafia? This is Poly Dom, Dom Dominique.
Starting point is 01:41:09 This is Dominique. Yeah, I've known him my whole life. Yeah, he fucking knew me. I'm from fucking Toronto. Fucking Toronto's the fucking shit. Every day of your life, you got your fucking ass to the grind in fucking Toronto. Oh, yeah, eating that poutine.
Starting point is 01:41:22 My plan was Dom would gain Richard's trust, and they'd eventually get him to either admit to or do something stupid. And in time, Richard would do both. All right. Once Dom was introduced to Richard under the claim that Dom could get Richard some hand grenades, the two began a 19-month-long game of cat and mouse.
Starting point is 01:41:44 All right. Of course, Pat Cain would do his part as well. After nothing really happened with Dom at first, Cain went to Richard's house to turn up the heat. And he started asking questions about Maske, Maliband, Hoffman, Smith, Deppner, and Dimeo, because one of Dimeo's guys had started talking. And it started to say, hey, you guys
Starting point is 01:42:09 need to hear about this Richard Kuklinski fella. In other words, everybody was talking now. That's not good. These mafia guys are so full of shit. Their loyalty and their omerta and all this kind of bullshit, they always fold. It's like a lawn chair factory in New Jersey. Yep.
Starting point is 01:42:28 Now, by this time, all of these murders were years in the past. But just the fact that Cain was showing up and asking questions was enough for Richard to decide that he had to go. But Richard knew that if the cop investigating him suddenly turned up with a hole in his head, there was no way Richard wasn't going to go down for it. Right.
Starting point is 01:42:49 So he needed to make it look like anything but a murder. And for that, he needed cyanide. Problem was, he'd murdered his only cyanide hookup for $25,000 a couple years before, and he was fresh out. Shouldn't have done that. Probably shouldn't have done that. Probably shouldn't have done that. Thank you, Kissel.
Starting point is 01:43:09 You're right. It's crazy. And so Richard asked Phil, and Phil took the opportunity to reintroduce his old buddy, Dominic Provenzano, for the hookup. OK. See, you got your true crime. I got your true.
Starting point is 01:43:26 You think? You think, Eric? This is like this. He killed a cyanide guy, and now we've got a fake cyanide guy who's an undercover cop. Yeah. This is where we're deep into the mob investigation shit, which is all this.
Starting point is 01:43:35 So it's just why it's very difficult to prosecute these guys, because you have to put all of these bullshit parts together in order to get at them. Yeah, he killed his cyanide guy, and so he had to get cyanide from an undercover cop so he could kill the actual cop that he was investigating. But the funny thing was is that the undercover cop, nor the cop investigating him, knew
Starting point is 01:43:57 that Richard Koklinski was getting the cyanide to kill the actual cop. Yep, and just cut to a Gambino crime family member eating out of his soup bowl hat, just watching the whole thing go down. I had his idea. What if we take soup and put it in like a bowl made out of bread, then you could eat the bowl, too,
Starting point is 01:44:17 instead of me just sucking on my hat, trying to get all the soup that's all absorbed into it. Just cut to him wearing the bread bowl as a hat. You'd think they're like, I like it because all the pigeons come and they surround me, and it's like I have friends. And it's nice because you never alone, but the other problem is they keep sweating into the hat, and then they fall apart.
Starting point is 01:44:38 And all of a sudden, I just got bread on my shoulders. And everyone's just like, oh, who's this guy with the East Andruff? I'm like, quit making fun of me. That's the dumbest thing we've ever done. You'd think that Richard would have smelled this guy from a mile away. Right.
Starting point is 01:44:59 But honestly, it seems like the thing that distracted Richard the most was the big, black, ugly as fuck wig that Dom wore at all times. It was just sliding back and forth. And he was going, this fucking wig. Nobody builds fucking mesh anymore. They used to make mesh fucking nice. They would stick to your fucking skull,
Starting point is 01:45:19 but his wig was fucking slapping back and forth. And this wasn't an undercover attack either. I like this. This wasn't a disguise. No, this is just his thing. Because Richard said that when Dominic Provenzano showed up in the trial, he was still wearing the wig. I love it.
Starting point is 01:45:34 Why the fuck is this guy still wearing that goddamn wig? That's like, it looked like a fucking raccoon went and died on his head. That's incredible. There is something to that. That's what Sasha Baron Cohen is doing so well at Who Is America? Great series, by the way.
Starting point is 01:45:48 He just looks so weird. You've got to stare at him. But you don't want to be rude and be like, what is wrong with your face, the whole thing? It's a good technique. So he's slapping the wig back and forth. He keeps dropping it off his fucking head. But honestly, it's a really smart thing to do.
Starting point is 01:46:01 It's kind of like when you go into a robbery and you wear a ridiculous mask or something. So people are just focused on that, instead of everything else being wrong about you. Yeah, and who knows if it was an actual misdirection tactic or not. But in retelling the story, Richard just seems obsessed with this goddamn wig.
Starting point is 01:46:19 OK, I get it. Because it's the kind of wig where he'd be sweating and he'd take it off just to wipe the sweat off of his head and then put it back on. So Dom showed up to the meeting and said, he'd be happy to help out with the cyanide. But there was this other score that he figured Richard might want in on because, see, buying cyanide or asking
Starting point is 01:46:38 for cyanide wasn't illegal. So they needed something more. Really? Yeah. Buying cyanide wasn't illegal? No, cyanide is not illegal. It is now, isn't it? No.
Starting point is 01:46:48 You could still buy cyanide. You'd use it to kill the Hawaiians. Yeah, you'd use it to kill rats and pests and stuff like that. And people. Yeah, and people. I guess so, yeah. Who may have been rats? Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Starting point is 01:47:01 Paycheck, I'll take it. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Dom said that he'd been supplying cocaine to this shitty Jewish rich kid and he'd gotten tired of him. He said, I don't know why he kept every single time always said, yeah, this Jewish kid, this Jewish kid, we got to kill this Jewish kid. Huh, maybe it was a plane on Kuklinski.
Starting point is 01:47:22 Maybe he didn't like Jewish people, is that possible? No, Kuklinski was fine with everyone. That's what he says, but then he killed so many people. Yeah. Now, he said that he'd been thinking about killing the kid and taking the money, but he didn't know how until Richard told him about the cyanide. He's like, okay, now that you got the cyanide thing,
Starting point is 01:47:41 now I know how to kill this kid, so we should do this job together. Okay. And Richard said, sure, of course, why not? And in that moment, Richard thought, fuck it, I'll just kill both of these assholes and take the money. Ah. And since Richard figured he was gonna kill Dom anyway,
Starting point is 01:47:59 he didn't really need to watch his mouth. This is actual audio from the wire Dom was wearing at one of their meetups after Dom had asked Richard to further explain the spray. You put that stuff in a mist, you spray it in somebody's face and they go to sleep. No shit. Long as he's dead, that's the bottom line.
Starting point is 01:48:21 Well, that's the thing, isn't it? No matter how it was done, I mean, I know guys that went to sleep and have a little cup again, I mean, you know. He laughs like Dick Cheney. That is like over the worst part of any sentence, like that's the funny part. Well, you know what it is, I really wonder,
Starting point is 01:48:38 because I don't know, I don't think Richard's dumb. I think we are saying this correct, because he did it because he knew he was just about to murder him, and it was like a joke to Richard Kuklinski to tell him how he kills people. Yeah, right. Yeah, and that wasn't even the half of it.
Starting point is 01:48:52 Like Richard would just jaw on and on about all of his various deeds and techniques every time they met, and did it all with the ease of like an old man on a porch telling a young kid, like what's what? I'm surprised this guy was able to get away with wearing the wire. This was what?
Starting point is 01:49:07 This is the 70s? This is 84, 85. I mean, it's pretty big clunky stuff there, isn't it? I mean, I was secretive. Oh, they were wearing wires back then. Yeah. You gotta pat him down. Why didn't Kuklinski pat him down?
Starting point is 01:49:18 Yeah, he didn't get, because he didn't suspect the thing because he trusted Phil Solomoni, and Phil Solomoni had vouched for the guy. Okay. Now, when Richard agreed to kill the cocaine kid, they had him on conspiracy to commit murder, at least, but they wanted Richard to go down forever. And so, a gigantic operation was created
Starting point is 01:49:40 to set up the Jewish kid's scenario in real life. The plan was to get Richard to attempt to kill the kid with cyanide spray, arrest him on the attempted murder, then use all that as proof to take him down, and the other murderers he was suspected of. So, just the kid was like, why are you spraying me with bonacca?
Starting point is 01:49:59 What's going on? Yeah, yeah, he just ate it. He was like, oh, thank you. Sodom got a hold of Richard and said the cyanide was on the way, and just as soon as it came, they could set up a buy, and Richard could spray the kid, and it'd all be fine. Problem was, the spray took a few days to prepare.
Starting point is 01:50:16 So, Dom, who'd spent almost two years hanging out with all the assholes at Phil Solomonet's store, trying to get Richard on the hook, he improvised and suggested they use egg sandwiches. Egg sandwiches? Yeah, egg sandwiches, yeah. Yeah, everybody fucking likes egg sandwiches.
Starting point is 01:50:35 The amount of food involved in this story is quite surprising. In a split second, Dom created this whole backstory for this fictional kid who loved egg sandwiches, was always eating egg sandwiches. This is what he said. Yeah, okay, it'll be an egg sandwich. Every time I meet this kid, he orders an egg sandwich.
Starting point is 01:50:53 I mean, we'll get him an egg sandwich, because that's all he does. He hates chickens, right? The thing about chickens is that you remind him of the fact that eggs are chicken's babies, so we can't even look at a chicken. So make sure that we don't take them to any chicken restaurants, because he gets sick.
Starting point is 01:51:06 He doesn't hunger anymore. But eggs, oh man, he loves eggs. He can't, I'll tell you what, you could even give him, you remember those snowballs, those Hostess Cakes? We could tell him it's an egg. We tell him it's an egg, he doesn't know the difference. He's never seen an egg that's not cooked. So we give him one of those and tell him
Starting point is 01:51:19 it's what actually eggs look like when they're cooked. Yeah? Of course, the only Polish contract killer alive, it's all sandwiches for this guy. And then when Richard asked if they even sold egg sandwiches at the place where the boy was supposed to go down, Dom said, I'll just bring some fucking egg sandwiches. Don't worry about the egg sandwiches.
Starting point is 01:51:35 I'll bring them there. What is happening? Yeah, you put an egg sandwich in front of this kid, he's gonna eat an egg sandwich. I don't know if he's gonna eat anything else, but I know he loves egg sandwiches, so now he's gonna eat an egg sandwich, so I'm gonna bring a couple of egg sandwiches.
Starting point is 01:51:47 This whole thing could have been spoiled by a waitress doing her job, be like, get out of here, we don't serve egg sandwiches. Cause you know what then it would be, him ordering it in front of Richie. And she's like, well, you don't serve egg sandwiches. She's like, you may tell me you don't got eggs back there. You may tell me you don't got fucking bread down there.
Starting point is 01:52:01 You go there and you get that fucking bread, and you get those fucking eggs, you make an egg sandwich. Wow, all right. And of course, egg sandwiches and cyanide. Ooh, and now I'm thinking about the Frasier intro. You don't know what to do about toss out and scrambled eggs? Oh, I don't know what to do about him. I would love to if he had, if Dominic was watching Frasier.
Starting point is 01:52:26 Also, Frasier could play Kuklinski. He's a big guy, that would be a great role. And he's troubled. He is troubled. Love him, love Kelsey. So the day finally came on December 17th, 1986. Richard drove to the agreed upon location, which was the Vince Lombardi rest stop
Starting point is 01:52:48 where the Chinatown buses always stop on the way south. Hey, all right. Remember, we've stopped at that Vince Lombardi, remember that trip we took down to Washington, D.C. where the crazy woman was talking to herself in the entire four hours? Yep, I know, Kellyanne Conway. We ran right into her there.
Starting point is 01:53:03 I got her. What is this? Wow, I will take my money, guys. I gotta go. Is this Samantha Bee? Are we not Samantha Bee right now? Oh, don't say anything too objectionable. Okay, don't wanna have to apologize.
Starting point is 01:53:18 My goodness, Vince Lombardi. The Vince Lombardi rest stop. Okay. So with a whole host of police officers watching, Dom and Richard met in the parking lot where Dom handed him the egg sandwiches with one hand and the cyanide with the other, making sure to say, here's the cyanide.
Starting point is 01:53:37 Loud enough for the wire to pick up the word. How many Packers fans do you think we're doing out of marriage hookups at the Vince Lombardi rest area at this time and thinking the cops were there for them? I don't know. Why is the Vince Lombardi rest stop in New Jersey? He's international, he's national, international.
Starting point is 01:53:54 He's noble, he's very well known. All right. Well, Richard then got back into his car and drove down the road to prepare the sandwiches as he always did. But the powder didn't look like cyanide and it didn't have the bitter almond scent of cyanide. So Richard bought a burger,
Starting point is 01:54:13 poured a bit of the powder on the bun and fed it to a dog. And when the dog just gobbled it up and went on his merry way, Richard knew that Dom was full of shit. Oh my gosh. However, it never occurred to Richard once that the whole thing was set up by the cops. He thought that Dom was just, in Richard's words,
Starting point is 01:54:34 just another jive-ass blowhard. Oh wow. He was though. He was, he still was. He went there, wow. And so Richard just went home. But the cops had been smart and they'd staked out his house too.
Starting point is 01:54:49 So when he showed up and it was obvious he wasn't gonna be going back to the rest stop, the dragnet raced Richard's house. And he took a really long time because Richard, wherever he drove places, he knew that he was constantly always, he was always afraid of being tailed. So he'd stop, he'd turn around, he'd watch cars.
Starting point is 01:55:06 So it's like when you're walking the dog and you're trying to go a couple blocks, but it's like 15 minutes just to go one fucking step. Are you saying that our dogs are all worried about being trailed? Are dogs murdering people? I'm never eating, if Puffin makes me an egg sandwich, I ain't gonna eat it.
Starting point is 01:55:22 Georgie, oh, Georgie's a silent assassin. Georgie is very much a silent assassin. So when Richard got home, he found that Barbara was sick. She'd been coming down with something. So Richard said, like, come on, I'll take you to the doctor. So they got in the car and they started driving, but they didn't get half a block before they were surrounded.
Starting point is 01:55:44 Now, Richard's plan, if he ever got caught, had always been suicide by cop. Hell yeah. But. Ooh, yikes. But Barbara was sitting right next to him. So the gun stayed under the seat and the Iceman was finally arrested.
Starting point is 01:56:03 Oh, right. Yeah, dude. It took three dudes to take him down. He was screaming, I'll kill you, motherfuckers. I'll kill you as they're grabbing him and they're dragging him in. Barbara's screaming. It was quite a Long Island site. They had to put leg irons on his arms
Starting point is 01:56:18 because the handcuffs weren't big enough. Really? Yeah. Strong guy. He's like, Bane. Wow. Yeah. So yeah, I could see him going out like the evil doers in the devil's rejects. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:56:30 I could see him going out. Was it the Firefly family? The Firefly family. Just shooting a bunch of folks. Yeah, I guess not though. So Richard ended up going down for the murders of Danny Deppner and Gary Smith. But since there were no eyewitnesses,
Starting point is 01:56:42 the jury gave him life in prison instead of the chair. And as Loth, as Richard was to accept it at the time, he seemed to kind of love prison. Well, this is where he would be a king, right? Yeah. The documentaries gave notoriety. Like he was famous. Yeah, and he got a lot of respect.
Starting point is 01:57:00 And honestly, it calmed him down. Because a big thing that's a good, which is a lot of people say that's a reason why he lied on the documentaries to get more respect in prison. But he also was a huge man and he was connected to the mob. So I don't think he needed to necessarily lie. I think that people knew that he was a contract killer,
Starting point is 01:57:17 especially when you have multiple kills under your belt. People normally treat you like with a little bit of like weird prison respect. Yeah. And you got him on Ativan and Paxil. Yeah. Super chilled him out. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:57:29 Really? After he got on Ativan and Paxil, he said, and this is a real quote, he said, I'd rather be known as the nice man, not the ice man. Well, what the hell is happening here now? That's strange. But. All right.
Starting point is 01:57:50 After 18 years in prison, in 2005, Richard came down with a rare incurable illness called Kawasaki disease. Really? The weirdest thing about this is that it usually only affects Japanese children. That is just very bizarre. However, its symptoms are akin to mercury poisoning.
Starting point is 01:58:15 And Richard was about to testify against one of his old supposed clients about a cop that Richard said he'd killed. And that Tuesday was egg sandwiched Tuesday. Yeah, Richard was about to lock horns with Sammy the bull Gravano. Really? Who's another incredible figure that when we get
Starting point is 01:58:39 to year 15 of the podcast that we will cover? So wouldn't you know it? Richard died from a cardiac arrest five months after being diagnosed with Kawasaki. He had tried to rescind a do not resuscitate order. But when the prison called up Barbara for authorization, she refused and possibly got just a little bit of revenge against the monster that was the ice man.
Starting point is 01:59:10 Wow. All right. Yeah, dude. Crazy story, everyone. Thank you all. So great, great job guys, powerful stuff. Oh yeah. And Richard Kuklinski, my goodness.
Starting point is 01:59:22 You know, Stone Cold Steve Austin came up with his name while watching the documentary. So there was something good that came from that. Is that what Stone Cold said? That's what Stone Cold said. Did he say so? He did say so. That's what Stone Cold said.
Starting point is 01:59:32 He did say so that you know that it's true. Right. Wow. Awesome stuff. Man, it is pretty incredible. It's a crazy story. I think that we poked holes and what needed to get poked holes in.
Starting point is 01:59:44 I think that you look at his, I mean, I think the last podcast in the left number, I think Marcus and I were talking about this yesterday. I think we would put him on 50 to 100 murders. Somewhere on there. 50 to 75, I'd actually probably say. 50 to 75. I'd say that in terms of wholesale murder.
Starting point is 02:00:03 We know for a fact that he killed at least 12. That we know for a fact. But I know that there are many, probably lumped in there. I don't know if we believe in a lot of his international travel, but he did something to afford the lifestyle that they had.
Starting point is 02:00:18 So there was money coming in. Yeah. Well, 50 to 75, that's enough. I'm coined it. I'm coined it. Yeah. That's enough. That's enough.
Starting point is 02:00:32 Wow. Well, indeed. Awesome. Well, thank you all so much for listening. Let's see, what do we have to say to everyone? We have to talk. We're going to be in Phoenix on Friday. We're going to be in Phoenix on Friday.
Starting point is 02:00:41 And we're going to be in Santa Ana on Saturday. So if you're in the Los Angeles area, you can drive on down to Orange County and see us perform this Saturday. That is what, August 18th? Yeah, August 18th. Y'all come out. Honestly, we got some tickets still left.
Starting point is 02:00:58 It's going to be a fun-ass show, because it's going to be a smaller show. So we're going to be out there getting a weird and LBC. It's going to be fun, man. Come check it out. And I can't wait to go to Phoenix. Henry, we were talking on side stories. There's a Habub, which is a dust storm.
Starting point is 02:01:14 I know. But there's many Habub's. Yeah, Lubbock is full. I went to college in a Habub heavy town. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lubbock's nothing but Habub's. Heavy Habub's.
Starting point is 02:01:23 And sometimes, the Habub would come in from the east, and the rain would come in from the west, and then it would rain mud. Habub. That's very, uh, a-boob. Very post-apocalyptic. You know what I heard about the heavy Habub's, is that they really hurt your back.
Starting point is 02:01:39 Oh, right. There we are. It's been a long show. It's been a long episode. Yes. So is there anything else that we want to say to anybody? Anything you want to get off your chest, Henry? Thank you, everyone, for giving to our Patreon.
Starting point is 02:01:56 If you'd like to get to Patreon, go to patreon.com. Slash, last podcast on the left. As we said at the end of last episode, unfortunately, we're no longer with Stitcher Premium. So if you want ad-free episodes, Patreon is not the only place that you can get them. So yeah, if you go to patreon.com slash slash podcast on the left.
Starting point is 02:02:16 Please keep giving to the Patreon so I don't have to resort to contract killing. I know you're not going to get the contract. Because I'm not good at it. Look at my action with this butter knife. How fast this is. Yeah, but it's pretty fast. Fastest game within 10 feet.
Starting point is 02:02:31 This week for the Patreon interview series, we interviewed this guy who wrote a book about Krampus. So it's a lot of fun. There's a lot to it, Marcus. I know there is. Krampus and St. Nicholas, they're friends. Did he talk about Black Pete? No.
Starting point is 02:02:45 But we will talk about that when we are going to have them. We were talking about having them back on around Christmas time. Yes. Nice. All right, everyone. Well, thank you all so much for listening. We love you.
Starting point is 02:02:54 Hail yourselves. Wait, wait, follow last podcast on the left on everything at LP on the left if that's what you want. Follow us on Instagram if that's what you want. But don't if you don't want to. So don't. Or do. Or don't or do.
Starting point is 02:03:07 Do or don't. Do you have multiple options? They're basically the only two options that are real in life. That's right. Do or don't. Yes. We always say do if it's something positive, don't if it's something negative.
Starting point is 02:03:16 Yeah, huh. That's enough. All right, we'll see. Hail yourselves, everyone. Hail Satan. Hail Geen. Hail me. Magustylations.
Starting point is 02:03:28 Tip your dealer. Yeah, and sniff your sandwiches, I guess. So make sure there's no cyanide in it. It's just going to go up your nose. You're going to inhale it, and you're going to die anyway. I don't know. Don't take sandwiches. Don't take sandwiches from anyone.
Starting point is 02:03:41 Yeah. I don't know, man. I like taking sandwiches. Just have your least favorite friend lick it first. I don't know.

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