True Crime All The Time - Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski

Episode Date: November 30, 2016

Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski committed his first murder at the age of 14. In his early days he killed anyone that annoyed or slighted him. He went on to become a mafia hitman and eventually formed his own crime ring. He earned the Iceman moniker for his method of freezing his victims, sometimes for years, in order to confuse law enforcement as to the victim's time of death. Law enforcement believes that the body count of The Iceman could be as high as 200. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode two of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm your host, Mike Ferguson, and I think we've got a really interesting show for you today. I hope you enjoyed our first episode, but if you haven't listened to it yet, make sure you go back and download that one. Also, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download your podcast to make sure you get all future episodes. I've tried to submit mine to as many places as possible to reach the widest audience. So let's dive right in and talk about the fascinating subject that is Richard Kiklinski.

It's kind of a hard name to say, so if I butcher it, please forgive me. Richard Kiklinski is not a serial killer in the normal sense that a lot of the people that we'll be talking about on this show are. but he did kill a lot of people he's admitted to killing over 100 people and in some interviews in excess of 200 he began killing people that got in his way or annoyed him

and then eventually graduated to becoming a contract killer for the mob approximate guess approximate I think if I had a choice I wouldn't so hopefully you got from that that this is one scary guy. Let's talk a little bit about Richard's childhood.

Richard Kaczynski was born on April 11, 1935, in the Polish section of Jersey City, New Jersey. He was the son of Irish and Polish immigrants. His mother Anna worked in a meatpacking plant, and his father, Stanley, worked on the railroad, and was a violent alcoholic. Richard was beaten routinely by both of his parents. And this is something that we see a lot with killers, serial killers, and the like.

But you're going to see a few of the normal traits that you see in these type of killers in Richard. So Richard was the second of four children. He had an older brother who died from injuries inflicted upon him by the father, Stanley. At the time of his brother's death, it appears that the family lied to police saying that the boy had fallen down a flight of steps. Richard had another brother who was given a life sentence for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. So in 1970, Richard's brother Joe, who at the time was 25, stole the dog of a local 12-year-old girl. Telling the girl that he'd recovered her lost pet, Joe tricked the child into following him to the roof of a building. There, Joe raped and murdered the girl.

He then threw her body and the dog off the roof. roof to the street over 40 feet below. The dog survived the fall and it was really by the dogs howling and crying and that this alerted the neighbors to the crime and the police were able to apprehend Joe pretty quickly. Joe confessed and basically in the local jail the guards encouraged other inmates to brutalized Joe. So he did get a little bit of what was, you know, coming to him.

He had just raped and murdered a 12-year-old girl. I'm not condoning that, but I'm also not, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it either, to be honest with you. Another, you know, we talked about Kikklinsky. There we go. Hard as shit to say that. We talked about Kiklinsky showing some of the traits that killers show when they're young. Another thing that he did as a youngster was he began killing cats.

And, you know, again, hallmark of killers, serial killers. you know basically any time that children torture small animals like squirrels, squirrels, birds, cats, dogs, especially without showing any type of remorse, those kids are likely going to grow up to be sociopaths, which I don't think there's any doubt that Richard Kikklinsky was a sociopath. So big, big time warning sign there as he started killing cats and mutilating other animals. So Richard graduated to his first murder at the age of 13 when he ambushed and beat the leader of a small gang of teenagers known as the Project Boys. This leader of the gang had bullied Richard for some time.

And following a pretty bad beating, Richard sought revenge. And he attacked this kid with a wooden dow, eventually beating him to death. He denied wanting to kill this kid, but he did end up killing him. The kid never woke up. Keklinsky then dumped the boy's body off a bridge in South Jersey. But before he did, he removed his teeth. chopped off his fingertips with a hatchet in an effort to try to prevent identification of the body. So that's pretty grown-up shit right there.

I mean, we're talking about a kid that's 13 years old, has just retaliated against a kid that's been bullying him, and not only does he kill him, but he has the forethought to remove his teeth and chop off his fingertips. I mean, at 13 years old. But Richard didn't stop there. After he killed the leader,

he went in search of the other boys and the gang. He took a metal pole from a trash can and beat all of them nearly to death. He didn't kill him, but he beat him very, very severely. So it was about this time, you know, 13. 14, 15, Richard began killing, basically, and he would kill anybody that annoyed him.

He killed Loud Mouse that reminded him of his father. He killed people that he played pool against. You know, if they looked at him wrong or said the wrong thing. Basically, the whole west side of New York City became his testing ground. He started honing his talents, killing people. And all this time, the police basically thought that, you know, these were just bums that were killing each other. They really never looked into it at this point. And Richard just kept on.

In one instance, Richard killed a group of boys who were messing with him while he was traveling. He was down in Georgia, and he was driving his car, and these boys were in a van, and they were messing with him on the road. Driving in Georgia one time, and we were riding down the road, and there was a couple of vans running around, and they were hooping and hollering and there.

I guess they were having a good old time and maybe drinking and whatnot. They decided, I guess it was interesting to play with a guy from New Jersey, and they saw it. to click, clack, and with their vans, and push me here and push me there, off the road, and they were running in and out,

and what their problem was, I really don't know, never did know. But it came to a point where I got extremely mad. But it was silly of me because I was away from home. I had no backing, I had nothing problem. I only had one weapon, which was in the trunk, which was at 3.50. with a hair trigger.

So I stopped the car and got out, opened the trunk. I had the release in the trunk, and took the 357, and just stood there. Apparently their eyesight mustn't be too good because I don't think I'd walk up on a guy with a 3.57 standing by his sign. But these fellas did.

They all died. So it wasn't long after this, that, Richard's criminal activity caught the attention of a crime family in Newark, and they hired him to begin killing other gang members, you know, opposition. And later interviews, Richard would say that he had killed between 50 and 100 people before he even got into his serious mob contract hitman work that was later to come. So one thing I haven't mentioned is, you know, Richard's appearance.

You know, he's 6'5. Eventually, you know, he's close to 300 pounds. So he was an imposing figure. And after doing some work with the, the crime family in Newark, he became associated with the Gambino crime family, much more famous. And one of the soldiers of the Gambino crime family

was a guy named Roy DeMayo. And Kukkensky met DeMaio basically because he owed money to a member of DeMeo's crew, and DeMeo had sent several members of his crew to intimidate Kiklinsky, and those guys, you know, they beat him up, they pistol-whipped him,

and, you know, beat him pretty badly. After this, Keklinski repaid the debt that he owed, and he actually began working with the DeMayo gang. He earned their receipts. respect, basically because he continually earned cash. And then he started gradually drifting into other criminal activities. So at one point, according to Kiklinsky, DeMayo takes him out in his car one day and they park on a city street.

DeMayo selects a random target, just a man out walking his dog. he then orders Keklinski to kill this man without hesitating Keklinski got out walked towards the man shoots him in the back of the head as he passes by and just keeps on walking from then on Richard became Roy de Mayo's favorite enforcer you know he he looks at what he was doing as a job, no different than most of us, you know, get up in the morning, go to work, put in our eight, nine, ten hours, whatever it is,

with no emotion as far as what you're doing from day to day. That's basically how he looked at this contract killing that he was doing for Roy Domeo, in the Gambino crime family. But it's chilling. It's chilling to sit and listen to him talk about, you know, taking another person's life like, you know, me filing a TPS report.

You know, it really is something. So while all this is going on, you know, Keklinski's now a hit man for, the Gambino crime family, he meets a woman named Barbara. So Richard and Barbara get married. They have two daughters and a son, and they start a family, you know, and a life.

They live in a suburban home. By all accounts, his family and neighbors, they're never aware of his activities. instead they believe that he's a successful businessman. The only thing that was ever said was that sometimes he would get up and leave the house at any time of the day or night. You know, they didn't know what it was,

but, you know, obviously he's leaving the house to do a job. Barbara would later say sometimes he would even get up in the middle of dinner. You know, if he were to get a call, it was not unusual for him to stop right in the middle of dinner and have to leave to go do a job. Later, Barbara would say that she didn't really know what Richard was doing. She had an idea, but she didn't know that he was killing people. She described his behavior as, you know, I guess you would call it bipolar.

She called it Good Richie and Bad Richie. So Good Richie was a hardworking provider for his family. He was an affectionate father and husband who enjoyed spending time with his family. Now, on the flip side, bad Richie would appear, now and then. Sometimes, you know, one day it would be good Richie. The very next day would be Bad Richie. Sometimes Bad Richie wouldn't come out for months.

The problem was Bad Richie was prone to, you know, fits of rage and violence. He was physically abusive to Barbara. and he was emotionally abusive to all of them, Barbara and the three kids. Authorities would describe Richard as unusual amongst both mobsters and killers. Apart from the fact that he has this very violent temper and, you know, he's killing people. he had none of the vices that were common among criminals. He didn't do drugs. He didn't drink alcohol.

He was not a womanizer and he didn't gamble. You know, in those days, I guess that was pretty strange for, you know, a criminal of his stature. The other thing that they thought, you know, his motives for murder were, also unusual. I mean, they didn't fit neatly

into the standard categories of a lot of the people that, especially the people that will be talking about on this show in future episodes. You know, like I said, he looked at this as a job. You know, he was a hitman. He killed people for money.

You know, early on, he killed people just because either he enjoyed it or, you know, he got so upset that they looked at him wrong. But at a certain point in his life, while he was this hitman, he was killing people for money, and that's all it was. He had no emotion. You know, he could stab, pull the trigger, whatever method he chose to carry out the hit. and then he would go home to his family. He could sit and have dinner and just like anybody else, and he wouldn't think about it.

He wouldn't lose a minute of sleep over it. So Keklinski eventually earns a nickname. And this nickname is what he'll be, you know, become known as, and it is the Iceman. He earns this nickname because he begins, to experiment in disguising the time of death of his victims. And he does this by freezing their corpses in a big industrial freezer. He would later tell an author that was writing a book about him that he got the idea from

another hitman named Robert Prong. Prong's nickname was Mr. Softie because he drove a Mr. Softie truck to blend in with the rest of the neighborhood. So here's Robert Prong driving around to Mr. Softie truck selling ice cream while carrying out hits. But it's said that Prong eventually teaches Kiklinsky

different methods of killing. And one that would become Richard's favorite, one of his favorites was cyanide. He used cyanide in a number of different ways to kill victims. It said that he would pour it in a drink, he would be at a club, acting like he was drunk,

accidentally bump into the person and either spill, you know, into their drink or, you know, into their face or on their skin or, I've read it a couple of different ways, but he used cyanide in a number of ways to kill people. The other thing that he got from prong was remotely detonated hand grenades. prong apparently was a some type of demolition expert and you know he taught kaklinsky a lot of things about you know explosives and grenades and things like that and so eventually prong asks kaklinski to carry out a hit on Prong's wife and child. And one thing that, you know, if you believe it or not,

Kiklinsky has said that I've read in a bunch of different places, I've seen in interviews, that he would never kill a woman or a child. So the theory is that this angered him. and in 1984 Prong is found dead shot to death in his Mr. Softie truck

it's never proven that Kiklinsky is the killer behind this but that's the theory so now we get into the 1980s Kiklinski's been working as a hitman now for the mafia for about

25 years, he starts to branch out and he starts his own crime ring. And he's looking, you know, for different avenues of making money and he's devising new ways to profit from killing people. One case in particular that I thought was very interesting was the case of pharmacist Paul Hoffman. So Hoffman, as a pharmacist, he wanted to purchase Tagamint from Keklinski. Now, a lot of you may know tagment is, you know, an antacid. You can buy it anywhere today. But back then, it was a prescription-only drug.

Keklinski claimed to have a large supply and was willing to sell it at a very low cost. So Hoffman figures out that he can make a very large profit and he wants to buy

a large amount of taggement and he is going to pay Kiklinski $25,000. So you know, the drugs used to treat

peptic ulcers, um, heartburn, you know, things like that. So Hoffman's going to resell this through his own pharmacy and, and make a lot of money.

So on the afternoon of April 29th, 1988, Hoffman meets Kukkklinsky at a warehouse. I swear to gosh, I cannot say Kukkensky. He meets Kukkensky at a warehouse. and they're going to do the deal.

Hoffman gives him the, gives Kuclinski the $25,000. It's at this point that Richard, I should have been saying Richard this whole time, Richard tells Hoffman that the business deal is a fake. He took the bag, door I opened this, showed me a whole mess of money, a whole mess of cash. He said, I got the money right here.

And he came back. He says, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? How am I going to get this merchandise? He put the gun under his chin. And I said, there is no merchandise. And I shot him. He didn't die.

The gun jammed, gurgling. I had hit him. It was, blood was pouring out of his mouth. And he was in a, I would have made him. He looked like he was in a lot of pain. So there was a tire iron there. I took the tire iron and hit him with it, which knocked him out.

And he died. I then took him and put him in a 50-gallon drum, put it on the side of a motel. It was behind Harry's corner. I listened to the people. I went in half of a house. Every morning. The thing was there for a long time.

I looked at it every day. It was there. And Harry's every day. One day it was just missing. Continued to go in Harry's to see if anything was said about it. Nothing was said. I don't know what happened to the drum. So Kuklinski is killing people this whole time.

You know, like Paul Hoffman and... He's getting sloppy. You know, we're in the early 80s. And the first major mistake that Richard made was discovered in December of 1982. And this is the decomposing body of 37-year-old Gary Smith. And it's discovered, Gary's body is discovered under the bed. in a hotel room in New Jersey. So Smith had, and Keklinski knew each other.

They often ran auto theft scams together with another man, Daniel Deppner. And at some point, Richard and Deppner decided to kill Gary Smith, which they did on December 23rd. and they killed him by feeding him a cyanide-laced hamburger. Here's where the cyanide comes back in, in their room at the motel. Well, unfortunately, well, fortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately for them, Smith took longer to die from the cyanide than they thought.

And Richard grew in patient, and he had Depner Strangle Smith, with a lamp cord. Deppner's ex-wife, Barbara, was in on it. She was supposed to come back and bring a car. She never comes back. So what do Keklinski and Deppner do? They place Smith's body in between the mattress and the box springs in this hotel room, and they just leave.

So four days go by. a number of people rent this room, sleep, do the other things that people do in hotel rooms on top of what is a decomposing Gary Smith. Eventually, the smell gets so bad that somebody complains. I can't believe it took four days,

but eventually it does get so bad. Somebody complains and they come investigate and they find Gary Smith's body. Now, according to forensic pathologist Michael Bodden, and if you don't know who Michael Bodden is, you don't watch enough true crime,

if it had not been for the ligature mark around Smith's neck that was created by the lamp cord, it the death probably would not have been ruled a homicide they probably would not have caught

the cyanide on its own so mistake number one mistake number two is Keklinski turns on Daniel Deppner and he kills him

so Deppner's body is found on May 14th 1983 when basically a vulture is picking at it and a bicyclist is riding down a road in wooded area of New Jersey, spots the bird and sees the corpse. Keklinski had put the body inside of a green garbage bag

before dumping the body and really he took a two or three miles away from a ranch where he and his family often went riding. So again, he's just really starting to get sloppy in the way that he's doing things. Also during this time, it's my understanding that, you know, Richard was starting to become, you know, starting to have a lot of anxiety. he's starting into to get into a lot of other things and this is probably what results in him getting sloppy the medical examiner so they list deppner's cause of death as

undetermined even though they noted some pinkish pinkish spots on his skin and so all of a sudden business associates of Richard Kukkensky start you know being found dead now we get to Louis Mazgay so on September

25th 1983 Keklinski makes another big mistake when Lewis Mazgay is found dead near a town park

in Orange Town, New York. Mazgey has a bullet in his head. Keklinski, as he had done many times before, we talked about this is how he got his nickname. He attempted to disguise Mazgay's time of death by storing his corpse in industrial freezer

for two years. The problem was that when he took it out of the freezer, he did not allow the body enough time to thaw before he dumped it. So when they find the body, the medical examiner, you know, has the body on his slab for whatever you call it. And, you know, they open it up. They're doing the autopsy. They find ice crystals inside of Mazgay's body.

and this is on a very, very warm September day. So, you know, it wasn't very hard to figure out that the body had been frozen. Again, this is another person that is a known associate. Because, you know, again, don't forget that the police, even though they haven't pinned anything on Kikklinsky yet at this point, they know who he is. He's on their radar. Now you have at least three people that are known associates of his wind up dead.

They're really looking at him big time. But it was this discovery that helped authorities figure out what Kukkensky had done in the past by using the freezer to disguise time of death. So eventually there are five unsolved homicides that get linked to Richard Keklinski because he is the last person to have seen each of them alive. We talked about Hoffman, the pharmacist. We talked about Smith,

Deppner, Masgay, and then the fifth is a gentleman named George Malaband, who was a friend of Richards. So in 1985, the New Jersey Criminal Justice Department creates a task force. This is composed of several different law enforcement agencies, and the whole task force is nicknamed Operation Iceman. It's dedicated to nothing but arresting and convicting Richard Keklinski. So how this operation went down is they have an undercover agent

by the name of Dominic Polyphron. I believe is how you say his name. So Polyphrone gets close to Kiklensky. over time. I mean, this didn't happen overnight. There's actually, there's a detective named Pat Kane. He had started the case against Richard, you know, six years earlier. So that would have been 79.

So like I said, you know, Richard Keklensky had been on the police, you know, police radar for quite some time. But he was good at what he did. He knew how to kill. He had a lot of practice. And again, he used the freezer trick to disguise time of death. That really threw off the authorities for a lot of his hits. So Detective Polifron working undercover is working with a close friend of Kiklensky. named Phil

Salamine. That's how Dominic is able to get in with Keklinski and Dominic Polifrone is posing to Kiklinski

as another hitman. And he's going by the name Dominic Michael Provenzano. So Paula Frone is telling Kiklinski, you know, they're talking on the phone and he's telling Keklinski that he wants to hire him for a hit and he's recording Kiklinski

speaking in detail about how he would carry it out. I portrayed myself as a hitman. I told him I worked for the wise guys downtown New York and my brother was a good fellow downtown and I went by the name of Dominic Michael Provenzano. You know, I just have a few bottles I want to dispose of. I have some rats I want to get rid of. Yeah. Only fucking thing I don't understand.

Don't you use a fucking piece of wine to get rid of these fucking people? Use this fucking sign-up. Why'd be messy? You can do it nice and calm. Never let anyone go for whatever reason did you ever decide to let someone go? Yes. But then I thought better. I'd dare and shot him anyway.

Ever murder anyone you liked? All my friends did. At one point in time, I'm sure I liked them. But not at the moment of killing them. I might have even liked them then. Honor among thieves, there's no such thing. You see, because I was put in prison by a man I knew 30 years, and I liked them.

Big mistake. I had one friend too many. I'm now serving multi-lifestances because of my one friend. And he's the only friend I didn't kill. So obviously there, Kiklinski's talking about this Phil Solomon, who he had known for 30 years. He's already killed all of his other friends, Depner, Mazgay, Malaband, Smith,

and this Phil Solomon that he'd known for 30 years, I believe, gets to the point where he thinks he's next. So at this point, he's willing to work with police. He's able to get Polifron in with Kukkensky. And that's who you heard in the very first part of that clip was Polifron talking about going undercover as Dominic Michael Provenzano. So now we get to December of 1986.

It is arranged for Keklinski to meet with Polifron to get some cyanide for a planned murder which was supposed to be an attempt on a police detective working undercover. Polifron had been talking to Kiklinski, had been recording him. Again, in that clip, second piece of that, that's what you heard, was Keklinski and Paula Frone going back and forth talking about, you know, ways to kill people.

And Keklinski talking about cyanide because, you know, why be messy? Keklinski, you know, he decides not to go through with this planned murder. He's starting to get suspicious and he goes home instead. doesn't go to the meeting. But the police already had enough on him. So he's arrested at a roadblock two hours later. They find a gun in his car. And his wife is charged as well with trying to prevent his arrest.

All in, prosecutors charged Kiklinski with five murders, six weapons violations, as well as attempted murder, robbery, attempted robbery. Officials later say that Kuklinski had large sums of money in Swiss bank accounts and that he had a reservation on a flight to Switzerland. So it was a matter of time before he was going to skip the country. Kiklinski's held on a $2 million bank. and made to surrender his passport. So this is 86 he's arrested.

It's not until March of 1988 that the trial ends. And the jury finds Keklinsky guilty of two murders, but they find that the deaths were not proven to be by Kukkensky's own hand. And so he doesn't face the death penalty. They know he's involved, but I guess they couldn't prove that beyond a reasonable doubt that, you know, he did it himself. So he spared the death penalty. In all, he's convicted of five murders and he's sentenced to consecutive life sentences. somehow though still eligible for parole,

but not until he's 110 years old. Law enforcement authorities have arrested one of the most notorious contract killers in state history. A self-employed Bergen County man is behind bars charged with five murders, and prosecutors are investigating his involvement in dozens more. This is unwarring. unnecessary

he's got to watch too many movies he is such a cold-blooded killer they called him the ice man after being convicted of two murders he confessed to two others in court today I shot George Mallivan five times Lewis Masgay on July 1st 1981 shot him once in the back of the head so there eventually you you hear that

Kikklinsky does confess to the murders and you know it's it's at this time that his family finds out that he's been living this double life you know how much his wife knew you know there's really no way to tell but in everything that I looked at read and saw you know she she seemed pretty shocked so I do think he was doing a pretty good job at leading a double life. And although she may have known that he was into something, I don't think she thought that he was out killing what could have been upwards of 100 to 200 people.

So Kiklinsky's in jail, you know, never to get out. And in 2005, he's been in jail for 17 years. and he's diagnosed with a rare disease, some type of inflammation of the blood vessels, and he's transferred to a medical center, secured medical center in Trent, New Jersey. I did read something about the fact that he had asked the doctors to make sure that they revived him if he flatlined,

but apparently his wife had already signed a do not resuscitate order and a week before his death the hospital called Barbara to ask if she wished to resend that instruction and she declined. So, you know, she's probably, why would she? You know, she finds out what he's been doing all this time. So Keklinski dies at age 70 on March 6th, 2006. And I don't think other than probably his kids. Because by all accounts, everything I read, he was actually a pretty good dad. So I'm sure his kids mourned his death. But the guy was a bad guy.

And he killed a lot of people. And so I don't think he was missed by many other than his kids, like I said. So that's our podcast for today. I hope you enjoyed it. I think Richard Kuklinski is a fascinating character. He's not the usual serial killer. But he's probably one of the most prolific killers, depending on the, the accuracy of, you know, some of the things that he said, you know, I've heard 30 to 50 to 100 to as high as 200. I don't think there's any way we'll ever know, but he could be one of the, you know, most prolific

murderers that we will ever talk about on this show. So I'd like to thank everyone for downloading and listening to the podcast. You know, I'm an independent podcaster, so I don't have a sound guy. I'm my own sound guy. I don't have a big media corporation behind me. So your support means absolutely everything. It's what's going to keep this show going and make it successful. So I'd ask you to please visit our website at www.

www. Truecrime all the time.com. There you can see all the contact information in order to follow the podcast. You can follow it on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click on the donate button. There's a number of different ways you can support the show financially. If that's something you're interested in. One thing I would definitely ask is that you bookmark the site and click through our Amazon banner, especially during this holiday season, anytime you're doing your Amazon shopping.

This is a great way to support the show and help defray some of the production costs, and it doesn't cost you anything. Your price is the same as it would be if you went to Amazon directly. It's just that Amazon gives us a little love back for the show for helping direct you there. So look for next week's episode, and as always, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.